The complete works of Stephen Charnock

( OCT li

B#93TB .CA27 1864 v. 2
Charnock, Stephen, 1628

1680.
The complete works of

NICHOL'S SERIES OF STANDARD DIVINES.

PUEITAN PERIOD.

Wii\ (^mral f r^fm

BY JOHN C. MILLEK, D.D.,

LiNCOi-N college; HosoEAur canoh of Worcester; rector of st martin's, birminqham.

THE

\^ORKS OF STEPHEN CHAENOCK, B.D.

VOL. II.

COUNCIL OF PUBLICATION.

W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., Professor of Theology, Congregational
Union, Edinburgli.

JAMES BEGG, D.D., Minister of Newington Free Chnreh, Edinburgh,

THOMAS J. ORAWFOED, D.D., S.T.P., Professor of Divinity, University,
Edinburgh,

D, T. K. DRUMMOND, M,A., Minister of St Thomas's Episcopal Church,
Edinburgh,

WILLIAM H. GOOLD, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Church
History, Reformed Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh.

ANDREW THOMSON, D,D., Minister of Broughton Place United Presby-
terian Church, Edinburgh.

General ffiftttor.
REV. THOMAS SMITH, M.A., Edinbtjegh.

THE COMPLETE WORKS

STEPHEN CHARNOCK, B.D.

Wiiil^ gntxatindxan

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS, QUEEN S COLLEGE, BELFAST.

VOL. II.

CONTAINING

DISCOURSE ON THE EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

EDINBURGH: JAMES NICHOL.

LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO. DUBLIN: G. HERBERT.

M.DCCO.LXIV.

KDINBURGn

PRINTED BY JOHN GREIG AND SON,

OLD PHTSIC GARDENS.

CONTENTS.

DISCOUESE ON THE EXISTENCE AND ATTEIBUTES OF GOD-

(CONTINUED).

Pagk

A DiSCOUESE UPON THE WiSDOM OP GoD.

A Discourse upon the Power of God.
A Discourse upon the Holiness of God.
A Discourse upon the Goodness op God.
A Discourse upon God's Dominion.
A Discourse upon God's Patience. .

. Rom. XVI. 27.

3

. Job XXVI. 14

. 99

. ExoD. XV. 11.

. 188

. Mark X. 18.

. 275

. Ps. cm. 19.

. 400

. Nahum. I. 3.

. 500

DISCOURSE ON THE EXISTENCE AND
ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

(Continued.)

A DISCOURSE UPON THE WISDOM OF GOD.

To God only wise, he glory through Jems Christ for ever. Amen. —
Rom. XVI. 27.

This chapter, being the last of this epistle, is chiefly made up of charitable
and friendly salutations, and commendations of particular persons, according
to the earliness and strength of their several graces, and their labour of love
for the interest of God and his people.

In ver. 17, he warns them not to be drawn aside from the gospel doctrine
which had been taught them, by the plausible pretences and insinuations
which the corrupters of the doctrine and rule of Christ never want from the
suggestions of their carnal wisdom. The brats of soul- destroying errors
may walk about the world in a garb and disguise of good words and fair
speeches, as it is in the 18th verse, ' by good words and fair speeches deceive
the hearts of the simple.' And for their encouragement to a constancy in
the gospel doctrine, he assures them that all those that would dispossess
them of truth, to possess them with vanity, are but Satan's instruments, and
will fall under the same captivity and yoke with their principal : ver. 16^ ^^
♦ The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.'

Whence observe,

1. All corrupters of divine truth, and troublers of the church's peace, are
no better than devils. Our Saviour thought the name Satan a title merited
by Peter, when he breathed out an advice, as an axe at the root of the gos-
pel, the death of Christ, the foundation of all gospel truth ; and the apostle
concludes them under the same character, which hinder the superstructure,
and would mix their chaff with his wheat. Mat. xvi. 23, ' Get thee behind
me, Satan.' It is not, * Get thee behind me, Simon,' or, ' Get thee behind
me, Peter,' but, * Get thee behind me, Satan : thou art an offence to me.'
Thou dost oppose thyself to the wisdom, and grace, and authority of God,
to the redemption of man, and to the good of the world.

As the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of truth, so is Satan the spirit of falsehood ;
as the Holy Ghost inspires believers with truth, so doth the devil corrupt
unbelievers with error. Let us cleave to the truth of the gospel, that we
may not be counted by God as part of the corporation of fallen angels, and
not be barely reckoned as enemies of God, but in league with the greatest
enemy to his glory in the world.

2. The reconciler of the world will be the subduer of Satan. The God of

4 charnock's works. [Rom. XYI. 27.

peace sent the Prince of peace to be the restorer of his rights, and the hammer
to beat in pieces the usurper of them. As a God of truth, he will make good
his promise ; as a God of peace, he will perfect the design his wisdom hath
laid and begun to act. In the subduing Satan, he will be the conqueror of
his instruments. He saith not, God shall bruise your troublers and heretics,
but Satan. The fall of a general proves the rout of the army. Since God,
as a God of peace, hath delivered his own, he will perfect the victory, and
make them cease from bruising the heel of his spiritual seed.

3. Divine evangelical truth shall be victorious. No weapon formed against
it shall prosper ; the head of the wicked shall fall as low as the feet of the
godly. The devil never yet blustered in the world, but he met at last with
a disappointment. His fall hath been hke lightning, sudden, certain,
vanishing.

4. Faith must look back as far as the foundation-promise, ' The God of
peace shall bruise,' &c. The apostle seems to allude to the first promise,
Gen. iii. 15 ; a promise that hath vigour to nourish the church in all ages
of the world ; it is the standing cordial ; out of the womb of this promise
all the rest have taken their birth. The promises of the Old Testament were
designed for those under the New, and full performance of them is to be
expected, and will be enjoyed by them. It is a mighty strengthening to faith,
to trace the footsteps of God's truth and wisdom, from the threatening against
the serpent in Eden, to the bruise he received in Calvary, and the triumph
over him upon mount Olivet.

5. We are to confide in the promise of God, but leave the season of its
accomplishment to his wisdom. He will bruise Satan under your feet, there-
fore do not doubt it ; and shortly, therefore wait for it. Shortly it will be done,
that is, quickly, when you think it may be a great way off ; or shortly, that
is, seasonably, when Satan's rage is hottest, God is the best judge of the
seasons of distributing his own mercies, and darting out his own glory. It
is enough to encourage our waiting, that it will be, and that it will be shortly;
but we must not measure God's shortly by our minutes.

The apostle, after this, concludes with a comfortable prayer, that since
they were liable to many temptations to turn their backs upon the doctrine
which they had learned, yet he desires God, who had brought them to the
knowledge of his truth, would confirm them in the belief of it, since it was
the gospel of Christ his dear Son, and a mystery he had been chary of and
kept in his own cabinet, and now brought forth to the world in pursuance of
the ancient prophecies, and now had published to all nations, for that end
that it might be obeyed ; and concludes with a doxology, a voice of praise,
to him who was only wise to efiect his own purposes, ver. 25-27 : ' Now to
him that is of power to establish you, according to my gospel and the preach-
ing of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was
kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the
scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting
God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.' This doxology
is interlaced with many comforts for the Romans. He explains the causes
of this glory to God, power and wisdom. Power to establish the Romans in
grace, which includes his will. This he proves from a divine testimony, viz.,
the gospel ; the gospel committed to him and preached by him, which he
commends by calling it the preaching of Christ ; and describes it, for the
instruction and comfort of the church, from the adjuncts, the obscurity of it
nnder the Old Testament, and the clearness of it under the New. It was
hid from the former ages and kept in silence, not simply and absolutely, but
comparatively and in part ; because in the Old Testament, the doctrine of

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 5

salvation by Christ was confined to the limits of Judea, preached only to the
inhabitants of that country : ' To them he gave his statutes and his judg-
ments, and dealt not so magnificently with any nation,' Ps. cxlvii. 19, 20 ;
but now he causes it to spring with greater majesty out of those naiTow
bounds, and spread its wings about the world. This manifestation of the
gospel he declares, first, from the subject, all nations ; 2, from the principal
efficient cause of it, the commandment and order of God ; 3, the instrumental
cause, the prophetic scriptures ; 4, from the end of it, the obedience of faith.*

Obs. 1. The glorious attributes of God bear a comfortable respect to believers.
Power and wisdom are here mentioned as two props of their faith; his power
here includes his goodness. Power to help, without will to assist, is a dry
chip. The apostle mentions not God's power simply and absolutely con-
sidered, for that of itself is no more comfort to men than it is to devils ; but
as considered in the gospel covenant, his power, as well as his other perfec-
tions, are ingredients in that cordial of God's being our God. We should
never think of the excellency of the. divine nature, without considering the
duties they demand, and gathering the honey they present.

Obs. 2. The stability of a gracious soul depends upon the wisdom, as well
as the power of God. It would be a disrepute to the almightiness of God,
if that should be totally vanquished which was introduced by his mighty
arm, and rooted in the soul by an irresistible grace. It would speak a want
of strength to maintain it, or a change of resolution, and so would be no
honour to the wisdom of his first design. It is no part of the wisdom of an
artificer to let a work, wherein he determined to shew the greatness of his
skill, to be dashed in pieces, when he hath power to preserve it. God designed
every gracious soul for a piece of his workmanship, Eph. ii. 10. What, to have
the skill of his grace defeated ? If any soul which he hath graciously con-
quered should be wrested from him, what could be thought but that his
power is enfeebled ? If deserted by him, what could be imagined, but that
he repented of his labour and altered his counsel, as if rashly undertaken ?
These Romans were rugged pieces, and lay in a filthy quarry, when God
came first to smooth them, for so the apostle represents them with the rest
of the heathen, Rom. i. 19 ; and would he throw them away, or leave them
to the power of his enemy, after all his pains he had taken with them, to fit
them for his building ? Did he not foresee the designs of Satan against
them, what stratagems he would use to defeat his purposes and strip him of
the honour of his work ? And would God so gratify his enemy, and disgi-ace
his own wisdom ? The deserting of what hath been acted is a real repent-
ance, and argues an imprudence in the first resolve and attempt. The gospel
is called, ' the manifold wisdom of God,' Eph. iii. 10 ; the fruit of it in the
heart of any person, which is a main design of it, hath a title to the same
character ; and shall this grace, which is the product of this gospel, and
therefore the birth of manifold wisdom, be suppressed ? It is at God's hand
we must seek our fixedness and establishment, and act faith upon these two
attributes of God. Power is no ground to expect stabiUty, without wisdom
interesting the agent in it, and finding out and applying the means for it.
Wisdom is naked without power to act, and power is useless without wisdom
to direct. They are these two excellencies of the Deity, the apostle here
pitches the hope and faith of the converted Romans upon for their stability.

Obs. 3. Perseverance of believers in grace is a gospel doctrine. ' Ac-
cording to my gospel : ' my gospel ministerially, according to that gospel
doctrine I have taught you in this epistle (for as the prophets were comments
upon the law, so are the epistles upon the gospel). This very doctrine he
* Gomanis in loc.

9 chabnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

had discoursed of, Rom. viii. 88, 39, where he tells them, that * neither
death nor life,' the terrors of a cruel death, or the allurements of an honour-
able and pleasant life, * nor principalities and powers,' with all their subtilty
and strength ; not the things we have before us, nor the promises of a
future felicity, by either ' angels ' in heaven or devils in hell ; not the highest
angel, nor the deepest devil, ' is able to separate us,' us Romans, ' from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.' So that, according to my yospel may
be according to that declaration of the gospel which I have made in this
epistle, which doth not only promise the first creating grace, but the perfect-
ing and crowning grace ; for not only the being of grace, but the health,
liveliness, and perpetuity of grace is the fruit of the new covenant, Jer.
xxxii. 40.

Obs. 4. That the gospel is the sole means of a Christian's establishment.
' According to my gospel ;' that is, • by my gospel.' The gospel is the in-
strumental cause of our spiritual life, it is the cause also of the continuance
of it ; it is the seed whereby we were bom, and the milk whereby we are
nourished, 1 Peter i. 23 ; it is the power of God to salvation, 1 Peter ii. 2,
and therefore to all the degrees of it : John xvii. 17, ' Sanctify them by thy
truth,' or ' through thy truth ; ' by or through his truth he sanctifies us, and
by the same truth he establisheth us. The first sanctification, and the pro-
gress of it ; the first lineaments, and the last colours, are wrought by the
gospel. The gospel therefore ought to be known, studied, and considered
by us ; it is the charter of our inheritance, and the security of our standing.
The law acquaints us with our duty, but contributes nothing to our strength
and settlement.

Ohs. 5. The gospel is nothing else but the revelation of Christ : verse 25,
* According to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ.' The discovery
of the myster}', and redemption, and salvation in and by him, it is genitiviis
objecti, that preaching wherein Christ is declared and set out, with the
benefits accruing by him. This is the privilege the wisdom of God reserved
for the latter times, which the Old Testament Church had only under a veil.

Obs. 6. It is a part of the excellency of the gospel that it had the Son of
God for its publisher : ' The preaching of Jesus Christ.' It was first
preached to Adam in paradise by God, and afterwards published by Christ
in person to the inhabitants of Judea. It was not the invention of man, but
copied from the bosom of the Father, by him that lay in his bosom. The
gospel we have is the same which our Saviour himself preached when he was
in the world. He preached it not to the Romans, but the same gospel he
preached is transmitted to the Romans. It therefore commands our respect ;
■whoever slights it, it is as much as if he slighted Jesus Christ himself, were
he in person to sound it from his own lips. The validity of a proclamation
is derived from the authority of the prince that dictates it and orders it ;
yet, the greater the person that publisheth it, the more dishonour is cast
upon the authority of the prince that enjoins it, if it be contemned. The
everlasting God ordained it, and the eternal Son published it.

Obs. 7. The gospel was of an eternal resolution, though of a temporary reve-
lation : ver. 25, ' According to the revelation of the mystery, which was
kept secret since the world began.' It is an everlasting gospel. It was a
promise ' before the world began,' Tit. i. 2. It was not a new invention,
but only kept secret among the Arcana, in the breast of the Almighty. It
was hidden from angels, for the depths of it are not yet fully made known
to them ; their ' desire to look into ' it speaks yet a deficiency in their know-
ledge of it, 1 Peter i. 12. It was published in paradise, but in such words
as Adam did not fully understand ; it was both discovered and clouded in

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 7

the smoke of sacrifices ; it was wrapped up in a veil under the law, but not
opened till the death of the Redeemer ; it was then plainly said to the cities
of Judah, * Behold, your God comes.' The whole transaction of it between
the Father and the Son, which is the spirit of the gospel, was from eternity;
the creation of the world was in order to the manifestation of it. Let us
not then regard the gospel as a novelty ; the consideration of it, as one of
God's cabinet rarities, should enhance our estimation of it. No traditions
of men, no invention of vain wits, that pretend to be wiser than God, should
have the same credit with that which bears date from eternity.

Obs. 8. That divine truth is mysterious. ' According to the revelation of
the mystery,' Christ, ' manifested in the flesh.' The whole scheme of God-
liness is a mystery. No man or angel could imagine how two natures, so
distant as the divine and human, should be united ; how the same person
should be criminal and righteous ; how a just God should have a satisfac-
tion, and a sinful man a justification ; how the sin should be punished and
the sinner saved. None could imagine such a way of justification as the
apostle in this epistle declares ; it was a mystery, when hid under the
shadows of the law ; and a mystery to the prophets, when it sounded firom
their mouths ; they searched it without being able to comprehend it, 1 Peter
i. 10, 11.

If it be a mystery, it is humbly to' be submitted to ; mysteries surmount
human reason. The study of the gospel must not be with a yawning and
careless frame. Trades you call mysteries are not learned sleeping and
nodding, diligence is required ; we must be disciples at God's feet. As it
had God for the author, so we must have God for the teacher of it ; the
contrivance was his, and the illumination of our minds must be from him.
As God only manifested the gospel, so he only can open our eyes to see the
mysteries of Christ in it.

In verse 26 we may observe,

1. The Scriptures of the Old Testament verify the substance of the New,
and the New doth evidence the authority of the Old : ' By the Scriptures of
the prophets made known.' The Old Testament credits the New, and the
New illustrates the Old. The New Testament is a comment upon the pro-
phetic part of the Old. The Old shews the promises and predictions of God,
and the New shews the performance ; what was foretold in the Old is fulfilled
in the New ; the predictions are cleared by the events. The predictions of
the Old are divine, because they are above the reason of man to foreknow ;
none but an infinite knowledge could foretell them, because none but an in-
finite wisdom could order all things for the accomplishment of them.

The Christian religion hath then the surest foundation, since the Scrip-
tures of the prophets, wherein it is foretold, are of undoubted antiquity, and
owned by the Jews and many heathens, which are and were the great enemies
of Christ. The Old Testament is therefore to be read for the strengthening
of our faith. Our blessed Saviour himself draws the streams of his doctrine
from the Old Testament ; he clears up the promise of eternal life, and the
doctrine of the resurrection, from the words of the covenant, ' I am the God
of Abraham,' &c.. Mat. xxii. 32. And our apostle clears up the doctrine of
justification by faith, from God's covenant with Abraham, Rom. iv. It must
be read, and it must be read as it is writ ; it was writ to a gospel end, it
must be studied with a gospel spirit. The Old Testament was writ to give
credit to the New, when it should be manifested in the world. It must be
read by us to give strength to our faith, and establish us in the doctrine of
Christianity. How many view it as a bare story, an almanack out of date,
and regard it as a dry bone, without sucking from it the evangelical marrow I

8 ' charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

Christ is, in Genesis, Abraham's seed ; in David's Psalms and the prophets,
the Messiah and Redeemer of the world.

2. Observe, the antiquity of the gospel is made manifest by the Scriptures
of the prophets. It was of as ancient a date as any prophecy. The first pro-
phecy was nothing else but a gospel charter ; it was not made at the incarna-
tion of Christ, but made manifest ; it then rose up to its meridian lustre, and
sprung out of the clouds wherewith it was before obscured. The gospel was
preached to the ancients by the prophets, as well as to the Gentiles by the
apostles : Heb. iv. 2, * Unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto
them.' To them first, to us after ; to them indeed more cloudy, to us more
clear ; but they, as well as we, were evangelised, as the word signifies.

The covenant of grace was the same in the writings of the prophets and
the declarations of the evangelists and apostles. Though by our Saviour's
incarnation the gospel light was clearer, and by his ascension the effusions
of the Spirit fuller and stronger, yet the believers under the Old Testament
saw Christ in the swaddling bands of legal ceremonies and the lattice of
prophetical writings. They could not ofier one sacrifice, or read one pro-
phecy, with a faith of the right stamp. Abraham's justifying faith had
Christ for its object, though it was not so explicit as ours, because the
manifestation was not so clear as ours,

8. Ail truth is to be drawn from Scripture. The apostle refers them here
to the gospel and the prophets. The Scripture is the source of divine
knowledge ; not the traditions of men, nor reason separate from Scripture.
Whosoever brings another doctrine coins another Christ : nothing is to be
added to what is written, nothing detracted from it. He doth not send us
for truth to the puddles of human inventions, to the enthusiasms of our
brain ; nor to the see of Rome, no, nor to the instructions of angels ; but
the writings of the prophets, as they clear up the declarations of the apostles.
The church of Rome is not made here the standard of truth, but the Scrip-
tures of the prophets are to be the touch-stone to the Romans for the trial
of the truth of the gospel.

4. How great is the goodness of God ! The borders of grace are enlarged
to the Gentiles, and not hid under the skirts of the Jews. He that was so
long the God of the Jews, is now also manifest to be the God of the Gen-
tiles. The gospel is now ' made known to all nations, according to the
commandment of the everlasting God ;' not only in a way of common pro-
vidence, but special grace, in calling them to the knowledge of himself, and
a justification of them by faith. He hath brought strangers to him, to ' the
adoption of children,' and lodged them under the wings of the covenant,
that were before ' alienated from him ' through the universal corruption of
nature. Now he hath manifested himself a God of truth, mindful of his
promise in blessing all nations in the seed of Abraham. The fury of devils
and the violence of men could not hinder the propagation of this gospel.
Its light hath been dispersed as far as that of the sun, and that grace that
sounded in the Gentiles' ears hath bent many of their hearts to the obedience
of it.

5. Observe that libertinism and licentiousness find no encouragement in
the gospel. It was made known to all nations ' for the obedience of faith.'
The goodness of God is published, that our enmity to him may be parted
with. Christ's righteousness is not ofi'ered to us to be put on, that we may
roll more warmly in our lusts. The doctrine of grace commands us to give
up ourselves to Christ, to be accepted through him, and to be ruled by him.
Obedience is due to God, as a sovereign Lord in his law, and it is due out
of gratitude, as he is a God of grace in the gospel. The discovery of a

KoM. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 9

farther perfection in God weakens not the right of another, nor the obliga-
tion of the duty the former attribute claims at our hands. The gospel frees
us from the curse, but not from the duty and service. We are ' delivered
from the hands of our enemies, that we might serve God in holiness and
righteousness,' Luke i. 74. ' This is the will of God' in the gospel, ' even
our sanctification.' When a prince strikes off a malefactor's chains, though
he deliver him from the punishments of his crime, he frees him not from
the duty of a subject. His pardon adds a greater obligation than his pro-
tection did before, while he was loyal. Christ's righteousness gives us a
title to heaven, but there must be a holiness to give us a fitness for heaven.

6. Observe that evangelical obedience, or the obedience of faith, is only
acceptable to God. ' Obedience of faith,' genitivus speciei, noting the kind
of obedience God requires ; an obedience springing from faith, animated
and influenced by faith. Not obedience of faith, as though faith were the
rule, and the law were abrogated ; but to the law as a rule, and fmm faith
as a principle. There is no true obedience before faith : Heb. xi. 6, 'With-
out faith it is impossible to please God,' and therefore without faith impos-
sible to obey him. A good work cannot proceed from a defiled mind and
conscience, and without faith every man's mind is darkened, and his con-
science polluted. Tit. i. 15. Faith is the band of union to Christ, and
obedience is the fruit of union. We cannot bring forth fruit without being
branches, John xv. 4, 5 ; and we cannot be branches without believing.
Legitimate fruit follows upon marriage to Christ, not before it : Rom. vii. 4,
* That you should be married to another, even to him that is raised from the
dead, that you should bring forth fruit unto God.' All fruit before marriage
is bastard, and bastards were excluded from the sanctuary. Our persons
must be first accepted in Christ before our services can be acceptable.
Those works are not acceptable where the person is not pardoned. Good
works flow from a pure heart, but the heart cannot be pure before faith.
All the good works reckoned up in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews were
from this spring ; those heroes first believed, and then obeyed. By faith
Abel was righteous before God; without it, his sacrifice had been no better
than Cain's. By faith Enoch pleased God, and had a divine testimony to
his obedience before his translation. By faith Abraham offered up Isaac,
without which he had been no better than a murderer. All obedience hath
its root in faith, and is not done in our own strength, but in the strength
and virtue of another, of Christ, whom God hath set forth as our head and
root.

7. Observe, faith and obedience are distinct, though inseparable : ' The
obedience of faith.' Faith, indeed, is obedience to a gospel command, which
enjoins us to believe ; but it is not all our obedience. Justification and
sanctification are distinct acts of God; justification respects the person,
sanctification the nature ; justification is first in order of nature, and sanc-
tification follows. They are distinct, but inseparable. Every justified per-
son hath a sanctified nature, and every sanctified nature supposeth a justified
person. So faith and obedience are distinct ; faith as the principle, obe-
dience as the product ; faith as the cause, obedience as the eflect. The
cause and the effect are not the same. By faith we own Christ as our Lord,
by obedience we regulate ourselves according to his command. The accept-
ance of the relation to him as a subject precedes the performance of our
duty. By faith we receive his law, and by obedience we fulfil it. Faith
makes us God's children, Gal. iii. 26, obedience manifests us to be Christ's
disciples, John xv. 8. Faith is the touchstone of obedience : the touchstone,
and that which is tried by it, are not the same; but though they are distinct,

10 chaenock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

yet they are inseparable. Faith and obedience are joined together ; obe-
dience follows faith at the heels. Faith ' purifies the heart,' and a pure
heart cannot be without pure actions. Faith unites us to Christ, whereby
we partake of his life ; and a living branch cannot be without fruit in its
season, and * much fruit,' John xv. 5, and that naturally, from a * newness
of spirit,' Rom. vii. 6, not constrained by the rigours of the law, but drawn
forth from a sweetness of love ; for * faith works by love.' The love of God
is the strong motive, and love to God is the quickening principle. As there
can be no obedience without faith, so no faith without obedience.

After all this, the apostle ends with the celebration of the wisdom of God :
* To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever !' The rich
discovery of the gospel cannot be thought of by a gracious soul without a
return of praise to God and admiration of his singular wisdom.

* Wise God.' His power before, and his wisdom here, are mentioned in
conjunction (in which his goodness is included as interested in his estab-
lishing power), as the ground of all the glory and praise God hath from his
creatures.

* Only wise.' As Christ saith, Mat. xix. 17, * None is good but God,' so
the apostle saith, none wise but God. As all creatures are unclean in
regard of his purity, so they are all fools in regard of his wisdom, yea, the
glorious angels themselves, Job iv. 18. Wisdom is the royalty of God ; the
proper dialect of all his ways and works. No creature can lay claim to it ;
he is so wise, that he is wisdom itself.

' Be glory through Jesus Christ.' As God is only known in and by
Christ, so he must be only worshipped and celebrated in and through Christ.
In him we must pray to him, and in him we must praise him. As all
mercies flow from God through Christ to us, so all our duties are to be pre-
sented to God through Christ.

In the Greek, verbatim, it runs thus : * To the alone wise God, through
Jesus Christ, to him be glory for ever.' But we must not understand it, as if
God were wise by Jesus Christ ; but that thanks is to be given to God through
Christ, because in and by Christ God hath revealed his wisdom to the world.
The Greek hath a repetition of the article w not expressed in the translation,
' To him be glory.' Beza expungeth this article, but without reason, for cS is
as much as durw, to him ; and joining this, ' the only wise God,' with the
25th verse, * To him that is of power to establish you,' reading it thus,
' To him that is of power to establish you, the only wise God,' leaving the
rest in a parenthesis, it runs smoothly, ' To him be glory through Jesus
Christ.' And Crellius the Socinian observes that this article J, which some
leave out, might be industriously inserted by the apostle, to shew, that the
glory we ascribe to God is also given to Christ.

We may observe, that neither in this place, nor anywhere in Scripture, is
the Virgin Mary, or any of the saints, associated with God or Christ in the
glory ascribed to them.

In the words there is,

1. An appropriation of wisdom to God, and a remotion of it from all
creatures : ' only wise God.'

2. A glorifying him for it.

The point I shall insist upon is.

That wisdom is a transcendent excellency of the divine nature. We have
before spoken of the knowledge of God, and the infiniteness of it. The
next attribute is the wisdom of God. Most confound the knowledge and
wisdom of God together ; but there is a manifest distinction between them
in our conception.

Rom. XVI. 27.J god's wisdom. 11

I shall handle it thus :

I. Shew what wisdom is ; then lay down,

II. Some propositions about the wisdom of God ; and shew,

III. That God is \sise, and only wise.

IV. Wherein his wisdom appears.

V. The use.

I. What wisdom is. Wisdom among the Greeks first signified an emi-
nent perfection in any art or mystery ; so a good statuary, engraver, or
limner, was called wise, as having an excellent knowledge in his particular
art ; but afterwards the title of wise was appropriated to those that devoted
themselves to the contemplation of the highest things, that served for a
foundation to speculative sciences.* But ordinarily we count a man a wise
man, when he conducts his afi'airs with discretion, and governs his passions
with moderation, and carries himself with a due proportion and harmony in
all his concerns.

But in particular, wisdom consists,

1. In acting for a right end. The chiefest part of prudence is in fixing a
right end, and in choosing fit means, and directing them to that scope. To
shoot at random is a mark of folly. As he is the wisest man that hath the
noblest end and fittest means, so God is infinitely wise ; as he is the most
excellent being, so he hath the most excellent end. As there is none more
excellent than himself, nothing can be his end but himself. As he is the
cause of all, so he is the end of all ; and he puts a true bias into all the
means he useth, to hit the mark he aims at : 'Of him, and through him, and
to him, are all things,' Rom. xi. 36.

2. Wisdom consists in observing all circumstances for action. He is
counted a wise man that lays hold of the fittest opportunities to bring his
designs about, that hath the fullest foresight of all the little intrigues which
may happen in a business he is to manage, and times every part of his
action in an exact harmony with the proper minutes of it. God hath all the
circumstances of things in one entire image before him ; he hath a prospect
of every little creek in any design. He sees what second causes will act,
and when they will act this or that ; yea, he determines them to such and
such acts ; so that it is impossible he should be mistaken, or miss of the due
season of bringing about his own purposes. As he hath more goodness than
to deceive any, so he hath more understanding than to be mistaken in any-
thing. Hence the time of the incarnation of our blessed Saviour is called
the ' fulness of time,' the proper season for his coniing. Every circum-
stance about Christ was timed according to the predictions of God ; even so
little a thing as not parting his garment, and the giving him gall and
vinegar to drink. And all the blessings he showers down upon his people,
according to the covenant of grace, are said to come * in his due season,'
Ezek. xxxiv. 25, 26.

3. Wisdom consists, in willing and acting according to the right reason,
according to a right judgment of things. We never count a wilful man a
wise man, but him only that acts according to a right rule, when right coun-
sels are taken, and vigorously executed. The resolves and ways of God
are not mere will, but will guided by the reason and counsel of his own mfi-
nite understanding: Eph. i. 11, ' Who works all things according to the
counsel of his own will.' The motions of the divine will are not rash, but
follow the proposals of the divine mind. He chooses that which is fittest
to be done, so that all his works are graceful, and all his ways have a come-

* Amyraut, Moral, torn. iii. p. 123.

12 chaknock's works. [Eom. XVI. 27.

liness and decorum in them. Hence all his ways are said to be judgment,
Deut. xxxii. 4, not mere will.

Hence it appears that wisdom and knowledge are two distinct perfections.
Knowledge hath its seat in the speculative understanding, wisdom in the
practical. Wisdom and knowledge are evidently distinguished as two several
gifts of the Spirit in man : 1 Cor. xii. 8, ' To one is given by the Spirit the
word of wisdom ; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.'
Knowledge is an understanding of general rules, and wisdom is a drawing
conclusions from those rules in order to particular cases. A man may have
the knowledge of the whole Scripture, and have all learning in the treasury
of his memory, and yet be destitute of skill to make use of them upon par-
ticular occasions, and untie those knotty questions which may be proposed
to him, by a ready application of those rules.

Again, knowledge and wisdom may be distinguished in our conception, as
two distinct perfections in God. The knowledge of God is his understand-
ing of all things ; his wisdom is the skilful resolving and acting of all things ; and
the apostle, in his admiration of him, owns them as distinct. ' Oh the depths
of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God,' Rom. xi. 33.
Knowledge is the foundation of wisdom, and antecedent to it ; wisdom, the
superstructure upon knowledge. Men may have knowledge without wis-
dom, but not wisdom without knowledge ; according to our common proverb,
the greatest clerks are not the wisest men. All practical knowledge is
founded in speculation, either secunduyn rem, as in men ; or secundum ratio-
nem, as in God. They agree in this, that they are both acts of the under-
standing ; but knowledge is the apprehension of a thing, and wisdom is the
appointing and ordering of things. AVisdom is the splendour and lustre
of knowledge shining forth in operations, and is an act both of understand-
ing and will ; understanding in counselling and contriving, will in resolving
and executing. Counsel and will are linked together, Eph. i. 11.

II. The second thing is to lay down some propositions in general concern-
ing the wisdom [ofj God.

Prop. 1. There is an essential and a personal wisdom of God. The
essential wisdom is the essence of God, the personal wisdom is the Son of
God. Christ is called 'wisdom' by himself, Luke vii. 35. The 'wisdom
of God' by the apostle, 1 Cor. i. 24. The wisdom I speak of belongs to
the nature of God, and is considered as a necessary perfection. The per-
sonal wisdom is called so, because he opens to us the secrets of God. If
the Son were that wisdom whereby the Father is wise, the Son would be
also the essence whereby the Father is God. If the Son were the wisdom
of the Father, whereby he is essentially wise, the Son would be the essence
of the Father, and the Father would laave his essence from the Son, since
the wisdom of God is the essence of God ; and so the Son would be the
Father, if the wisdom and power of the Father were originally in the
Son.

Prop. 2. Therefore, secondly, the wisdom of God is the same with the
essence of God. Wisdom in God is not a habit added to his essence, as it
is in man, but it is his essence. It is like the splendour of the sun, the
same with the sun itself; or like the brightness of crystal, which is not
communicated to it by anything else, as the brightness of a mountain is by
the beam of the sun, but it is one with the crystal itself. It is not a habit
superadded to the divine essence : that would be repugnant to the simplicity
of God, and speak him compounded of diverse principles ; it would be con-
trary to the eternity of his perfections. If he be eternally wise, his wisdom

KoM, XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 13

is his essence ; for there is nothing eternal but the essence of God.* As
the sun melts some things and hardens others, blackens some things and
■whitens others, and produceth contrary qualities in different subjects, yet it
is but one and the same quality in the sun which is the cause of those con-
trary operations, so the perfections of God seem to be diverse in our con-
ceptions, yet they are but one and the same in God. The wisdom of
God is God acting prudently, as the power of God is God acting power-
fully, and the justice of God is God acting righteously ; and therefore it is
more truly said, that God is wisdom, justice, truth, power, than that he is
wise, just, true, &c., as if he were compounded of substance and qualities.
All the operations of God proceed from one simple essence, as all the
operations of the mind of man, though various, proceed from one faculty of
understanding.

Prop. 3. Wisdom is the property of God alone. He is only wise. It is
an honour peculiar to him. Upon the account that no man deserved the title
of wise, but that it was a royalty belonging to God,f Pythagoras would not
be called 2cf &;, a title given to their learned men, but O/Xotropoj. The name
philosopher arose out of a respect to this transcendent perfection of God.

(1.) God is only wise necessarily. As he is necessarily God, so he is
necessarily wise ; for the notion of wisdom is inseparable from the notion of
a Deity. When we say God is a Spirit, is true, righteous, wise, we under-
stand that he is transcendently these by an intrinsic and absolute necessity,
by virtue of his own essence, without the efficiency of any other, or any
efficiency in and by himself. God doth not make himself wise, no more
than he makes himself God. As he is a necesssary being in regard of his
life, so he is necessarily wise in regard of his understanding. Synesius
saith, that God is esseutiated, ouaioiJcdat, by his understanding. He places
the substance of God in understanding and wisdom ; wisdom is the first
vital operation of God. He can no more be unwise than he can be untrue;
for folly in the mind is much the same with falsity in speech. Wisdom
among men is gained by age and experience, furthered by instructions and
exercise, but the wisdom of God is his nature ; as the sun cannot be with-
out light, while it remains a sun, and as eternity cannot be without immor-
tality, so neither can God be without wisdom. As ' he only hath immor-
tality,' 1 Tim.'vi. 16, not arbitrarily, but necessarily, so he only hath wisdom;
not because he will be wise, but because he cannot but be wise. He cannot
but contrive counsels, and exert operations becoming the greatness and
majesty of his nature.

(2.) Therefore only wise originally. God is avroBida.}(.Tog, avrosofog.
Men acquire wisdom by the loss of their fairest years : but his wisdom is
the perfection of the divine nature, not the birth of study or the growth of
experience, but as necessary, as eternal as his essence. He goes not out
of himself to search wisdom ; he needs no more the brains of creatures in
the contrivances of his pui-poses than he doth their arm in the execution of
them. He needs no counsel, he receives no counsel from any : Rom. xi. 34,
' Who hath been his counsellor?' and Isa. xl. 14, ' With whom took he
counsel, and who instructed him, or taught him in the path of judgment,
and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the path of understanding ? '
He is the only fountain of w^isdom to others ; angels and men have what
wisdom they have by communication from him. All created wisdom is
a spark of the divine light, like that'of the stars borrowed from the sun.
He that borrows wisdom from another, and doth not originally possess it in
his own nature, cannot properly be called wise. As God is the only being,
* Maimon. Mor. part i. cap. 53. t Laert. lib. i. Proem.

14 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

in regard that all other beings are derived from him, so he is only wise,
because all other wisdom flows from him. He is the spring of wisdom to
all ; none the original of wisdom to him.

(3.) Therefore only wise perfectly. There is no cloud upon his under-
standing. He hath a distinct and certain knowledge of all things that can
fall under action. As he hath a perfect knowledge, without ignorance, so he
hath a beautiful wisdom, without mole or wart. Men are wise, yet have not
an understanding so vast as to grasp all things, nor a perspicacity so clear
as to penetrate into the depths of all beings. Angels have more delightful
and lively sparks of wisdom, yet so imperfect, that in regard of the wisdom
of God they ate charged with folly. Job iv. 18. Their wisdom as well as
their holinesJip* veiled in the presence of God. It vanisheth, as the glowing
of a fire doth before the beauty of the sun ; or as a light of a candle in the
midst of a sunshine contracts itself, and none of its rays are seen, but in the
body of the flame. The angels are not perfectly wise, because they are not
perfectly knowing. The gospel, the great discovery of God's wisdom, was
hid from them for ages.

(4.) Therefore only wise universally. Wisdom in one man is of one sort,
in another of another sort ; one is a wise tradesman, another a wise states-
man, and another a wise philosopher ; one is wise in the business of the
world, another is wise in divine concerns ; one hath not so much of plenty
of one sort, but he may have a scantiness in another ; one may be wise for
invention, and foolish in execution ; an artificer may have skill to frame an
engine, and not skill to use it. The ground that is fit for olives, may not
be fit for vines ; that will bear one sort of grain and not another. But God
hath an universal wisdom, because his nature is wise ; it is not limited, but
hovers over everything, shines in every being. His executions are as wise
as his contrivances ; he is wise in his resolves, and wise in his ways ; wise
in all the varieties of his works of creation, government, redemption. As
his will wills all things, and his power eflects all things, so his wisdom is
the universal director of the motions of his will, and the executions of his
power ; as his righteousness is the measure of the matter of his actions, so
his wisdom is the rule that directs the manner of his actions. The absolute
power of God is not an unruly power ; his wisdom orders all things, so that
nothing is done but what is fit and convenient, and agreeable to so excellent
a being ; as he cannot do an unjust thing because of his righteousness, so
he cannot do an unwise act because of his infinite wisdom. Though God
be not necessitated to any operation without himself, as to the creation of
anything, yet supposing he will act, his wisdom necessitates him to do that
which is congruous ; as his righteousness necessitates him to do that which
is just, so that though the will of God be the principle, yet his wisdom is
the rule of his actions. We must in our conceiving of the order suppose
wisdom antecedent to will. None that acknowledges a God can have such an
impious thought as to affix temerity and rashness to any of his proceedings.

All his decrees are drawn out of the infinite treasury of wisdom in him-
self. He resolves nothing about any of his creatures without reason, but
the reason of his purposes is in himself, and springs from himself, and not
from the creatures.* There is not one thing that he wills, but he wills by
counsel, and works by counsel, Eph. i. 11. Counsel writ down every line,
every letter in his eternal book, and all the orders are drawn out from
thence by his wisdom and will. What was illustrious in the contrivance
glitters in the execution. His understanding and will are infinite ; what is
rill is the result of his undersf
Polliill against Sherlock, p. 377.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 15

rational; his understanding and will join hands; there is no contest in God,
will against mind, and mind against will ; they are one in God, one in his
resolves, and one in all his works.

(5.) Therefore he is only wise perpetually. As the wisdom of man is got
by ripeness of age, so it is lost by decay of years ; it is got by instruction,
and lost by dotage. The perfectest minds, when in the wane, have been
darkened with folly. Nebuchadnezzar, that was wise for a man, became as
foolish as a brute. But ' the Ancient of days ' is an unchangeable possessor
of prudence ; his wisdom is a mirror of brightness, without a defacing spot.
It was ' possessed by him in the beginning of his ways, before his works of
old,' Prov. viii. 22, and he can never be dispossessed of it in the end of his
works. It is inseparable from him ; the being of his Godht^u may as soon
cease as the beauty of his mind. ' With him is wisdom,' Job xii. 13 ; it is
inseparable from him, therefore as durable as his essence. It is a wisdom
infinite, and therefore without increase or decrease in itself. The experi-
ence of so many ages in the government of the world hath added nothing
to the immensity of it, as the shining of the sun since the creation of the
world hath added nothing to the light of that glorious body. As ignorance
never darkens his knowledge, so folly never disgraces his prudence. God
infatuates men, but neither men nor devils can infatuate God ; he is un-
erringly wise, his counsel doth not vary and flatter.* It is not one day one
counsel, and another day another, but it stands like an immoveable rock or
a mountain of brass : * The counsel of the Lord stands for ever, and the
thoughts of his heart to all generations,' Ps. xxxiii. 11.

(6.) He is only incomprehensibly wise. His * thoughts are deep,' Ps.
xcii. 5; 'his judgments unsearchable, his ways past finding out,' Rom.
xi. 83, depths that cannot be fathomed ; a splendour more dazzling to our
dim minds, than the light of the sun to our weak eyes. The wisdom of
one man may be comprehended by another, and over comprehended ; and
often men are understood by others to be wiser in their actions than they
understand themselves to be. And the wisdom of one angel may be
measured by another angel of the same perfection ; but as the essence, so
the wisdom of God, is incomprehensible to any creature. God is only
comprehended by God. The secrets of wisdom in God are double to the
expressions of it in his works : Job xi. 6, 7, ' Canst thou by searching find
out God ? ' There is an unfathomable depth in all his decrees, in all his
works. We cannot comprehend the reason of his works, much less that of
his decrees, much less that in his nature ; because his wisdom being infinite
as well as his power, can no more act to the highest pitch than his power.
As his power is not terminated by what he hath wrought, but he could give
further testimonies of it, so neither is his wisdom, but he could furnish us
with infinite expressions and pieces of his skill. As in regard of his im-
mensity he is not bounded by the limits of place, in regard of his eternity
not measured by the minutes of time, in regard of his power not terminated
with this or that number of objects, so in regard of his wisdom he is not
confined to this or that particular mode of working ; so that in regard of
the reason of his actions, as well as the glory and majesty of his nature,
•he dwells in unapproachable light,' 1 Tim. vi. 16; and whatsoever we
understand of his wisdom in creation and providence, is infinitely less than
what is in himself and his own unbounded nature.

Many things in Scripture are declared chiefly to be the acts of the divine
will, yet we must not think that they were acts of mere will without wisdom,
but they are represented so to us, because we are not capable of understand-
* Qu. • flutter ' V— Ed.

16 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

ing the infinite reason of its acts. His sovereignty is more intelligible to us
than his wisdom. We can better know the commands of a superior, and
the laws of a prince, than understand the reason that gave birth to those
laws. We may know the orders of the divine will as they are published,
but not the sublime reason of his will. Though election be an act of God's
sovereignty, and he hath no cause from without to determine him, yet his
infinite wisdom stood not silent while mere dominion acted. Whatsoever
God doth, he doth wisely as well as sovereignly, though that wisdom which
lies in the secret places of the divine being be as incomprehensible to us as
the efiects of his sovereignty and power in the world are visible. God can
give a reason of his proceeding, and that drawn from himself, though we
understand it not.

Though causes of things visible lie hid from us ; — doth any man know how
to distinguish the seminal virtue of a small seed from the body of it, and in
what nook and corner that lies, and what that is that spreads itself in so
fair a plant, and so many flowers ? Can we comprehend the justice of
God's proceedings in the prosperity of the wicked, and the afflictions of the
godly ? — yet as we must conclude them the fruits of an unerring righteous-
ness, so we must conclude all his actions the fruits of an unspotted wisdom,
though the concatenation of all his counsels is not intelligible to us ; for he
is as essentially and necessarily wise, as he is essentially and necessarily
good and righteous.

God is not onl}^ so wise that nothing more wise can be conceived, but he
is more wise than can be imagined, something greater in all his perfections
than can be comprehended by any creature. It is a foolish thing therefore
to question that which we cannot comprehend ; we should adore instead of
disputing against it, and take it for granted that God would not order any-
thing, were it not agi*eeable to the sovereignty of his wisdom as well as that
of his will. Though the reason of man proceed from the wisdom of God,
yet there is more difi'erence between the reason of man and the wisdom of
God than between the light of the sun and the feeble shining of the glow-
worm ; yet we presume to censure the ways of God, as if our purblind reason
had a reach above him.

(7.) God is only wise infallibly. The wisest men meet with rubs in the
way, that make them fall short of what they aim at. They often design,
and fail ; then begin again, and yet all their counsels end in smoke, and
none of them arrive at perfection. If the wisest angels lay a plot, they
may be disappointed ; for though they are higher and wiser than man, yet
there is one higher and wiser than they that can check their projects. God
always compasseth his end, never fails of anything he designs and aims at ;
all his undertakings are counsel and will. As nothing can resist the efficacy
of his will, so nothing can countermine the skill of his counsel : ' There is
no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord,' Prov. xxi. 30.
He compasseth his ends by those actions of men and devils wherein they
think to cross him ; they shoot at their own mark and hit his. Lucifer's
plot by divine wisdom fulfilled God's purpose against Lucifer's mind. The
counsel of redemption by Christ, the end of the creation of the world, rode
into the world upon the back of the serpent's temptation. God never mis-
takes the means, nor can there be any disappointments to make him vary
his counsels, and pitch upon other means than what before he had ordained :
' His word that goeth forth of his mouth shall not return to him void, but
it shall accomplish that which he pleases, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto he sent it,' Isa. Iv. 11. What is said of his word is true of his
counsel, it shall prosper in the thing for which it is appointed ; it cannot

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 17

be defeated by all the legions of men and devils ; for ' as he thinks, so shall
it come to pass ; and as he hath purposed, so shall it stand. The Lord
hath purposed, and who shall disannul it ? ' Isa. xiv. 24, 27. The wisdom
of the creature is a drop from the wisdom of God, and is like a drop to the
ocean, and a shadow to the sun ; and therefore is not able to mate the
wisdom of God, which is infinite and boundless. No wisdom is exempted
from mistakes but the divine. He is wise in aU his resolves, and never
' calls back his words ' and purposes, Isa. xxxi. 2.

III. The third general is to prove that God is wise.

This is ascribed to God in Scripture : Dan. ii. 20, ' Wisdom and might
are his:' wisdom to contrive, and power to efiect. Where should wisdom
dwell but in the head of a Deity, and where should power triumph but in
the arm of Omnipotency ? * All that God doth he doth artificially, skilfully,
whence he is called the builder of the heavens, Heb. xi. 10; Ti'/virr,:, an
artificial and curious builder, a builder by art. And that word, Prov. viii.
30, meant of Christ, ' Then I was by him, as one brought up with him,'
some render it, ' Then was I the curious artificer ;' and the same word is
translated ' a cunning workman,' Cant. vii. 5. For this cause counsel is
ascribed to God (Isa. xlvi. 10 ; Jer. xxxii. 19, ' Great in counsel ;' Job
xii. 13, 'He hath counsel and understanding'); not properly, for counsel
implies something of ignorance or irresolution antecedent to the consulta-
tion, and a posture of will afterwards which was not before. Counsel is
properly a laborious deliberation and a reasoning of things, an invention of
means for the attainment of the end, after a discussing and reasoning of all
the doubts which arise pro re natd, about the matter in counsel ; tut God
hath no need to deliberate in himself what are the best means to accom-
plish his ends. He is never ignorant or undetermined what course he
should take, as men are before they consult ; but it is an expression in
condescension to our capacity, to signify that God doth nothing but with
reason and understanding, with the highest prudence, and for the most
glorious ends, as men do after consultation, and the weighing of every fore-
seen circumstance.

Though he acts all things sovereignly by his will, yet he acts all things
wisely by his understanding ; and there is not a decree of his will, but he
can render a satisfactory reason for in the face of men and angels. As he
is the cause of all things, so he hath the highest wisdom for the ordering of
all things. If wisdom among men be the knowledge of divine and human
things, God must be infinitely wise, since knowledge is most radiant in him.
He knows what angels and men do, and infinitely more ; what is known by
them obscurely, is known by him clearly. What is known by man after it
is done, was known by God before it was wrought. By his wisdom, as much
as by anything, he infinitely differs from all his creatures, as by wisdom man
differs from a brute. We cannot frame a notion of God, without conceiving
him infinitely wise. We should render him very inconsiderable, to imagine
him furnished with an infinite knowledge, and not have an infinite wisdom
to make use of that knowledge ; or to fancy him with a mighty power, des-
titute of prudence. Knowledge without prudence, is an eye without motion ;
and pov/er without discretion, is an arm without a head ; a hand to act, with-
out understanding to contrive and model ; a strength to act, without reason
to know how to act. It would be a miserable notion of a god, to fancy
him with a brutish and unguided power. The heathens therefore had, and
could not but have, this natural notion of God. Plato therefore calls him
* CulverweU, Light of Nature, p. 30.

VOL. II. B

//

18 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

Mens* and Cleanthes used to call God Reason, and Socrates thouglit the
title of 2opAs too magnificent to be attributed to anything else but God alone.

Arguments to prove that God is wise.

Rects. 1. God could not be infinitely perfect without wisdom. A rational
nature is better than an irrational nature. A man is not a perfect man
without reason ; how can God, without it, be an infinitely perfect God ?
Wisdom is the most eminent of all virtues ; all the other perfections of God
without this, would be as a body without an eye, a soul without understand-
ing. A Christian's graces want their lustre, when they are destitute of the
guidance of wisdom ; mercy is a feebleness, and justice a cruelty, patience a
timorousness, and courage a madness, without the conduct of wisdom. So
the patience of God would be cowardice, his power an oppression, his justice
a tyranny, without wisdom as the spring, and holiness as the rule. No attri-
bute of God could shine with a due lustre and brightness without it. Power
is a great perfection, but wisdom a greater.f Wisdom may be without much
power, as in bees and ants ; but power is a tyrannical thing without wisdom
and righteousness. The pilot is more valuable because of his skill, than the
galley-slave because of his strength, and the conduct of a general more estima-
ble than the might of a private soldier. Generals are chosen more by their
skill to guide, than their strength to act. What a clod is a man without
prudence ; what a nothing would God be without it ! This is the salt that
gives relish to all other perfections in a creature ; this is the jewel in the
ring of all the excellencies of the divine nature, and holiness is the splendour
of that jewel.

Now God, being the first Being, possesses whatsoever is most noble in
any being. If therefore wisdom, which is the most noble perfection in any
creature, were wanting to God, he would be deficient in that which is the
highest excellency. God being the ' living God,' as he is frequently termed
in Scripture, he hath therefore the most perfect manner of living, and that
must be a pure and intellectual life. Being essentially living, he is essen-
tially in the highest degree of living. As he hath an infinite life above all
creatures, so he hath an infinite, intellectual life, and therefore an infinite
wisdom ; whence some have called God not sapientem, but super-saplentem, \
not only wise, but above all wisdom.

Reas. 2. Without infinite wisdom, he could not govern the world. With-
out wisdom in forming the matter, which was made by divine power, the
world could have been no other than a chaos ; and without wisdom in govern-
ment, it could have been no other than a heap of confusion ; without wisdom,
the world could not have been created in the posture it is. Creation sup-
poseth a determination of the will, jDutting power upon acting ; the deter-
mination of the will supposeth the counsel of the understanding, determining
the will. No work, but supposeth understanding, as well as will, in a rational
agent. As without skill things could not be created, so without it things
cannot be governed. Reason is a necessary perfection to him that presides
over all things. Without knowledge, there could not be in God a foundation
for government ; and without wisdom, there could not be an exercise of
government ; and without the most excellent wisdom, he could not be the
most excellent governor. He could not be an universal governor, without a
universal wisdom ; nor the sole governor, without an uuimitable wisdom ;
nor an independent governor, without an original and independent wisdom ;
nor a perpetual governor, without an incorruptible wisdom. He would not

* Eugub. Per. Philosoph., lib. i. cap. v.

t Licet magnum aii posse, majus tamen est sapere.

% Suarez, vol. 1. lib. i. cap. iii. p. 10.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 19;

be the Lord of the world in all points, without skill to order the affairs of it.
Power and wisdom are foundations of all authority and government : wisdom
to know how to rule and command, power to make those commands obeyed.
No regular order could issue out without the first, nor could any order be
enforced without the second. A feeble wisdom and a brutish power seldom
or,_never produce any good effect. Magistracy without wisdom, would be a
frantic power, a rash conduct. Like a strong arm when the eye is out, it
strikes it knows not what, and leads it knows not whither. Wisdom without
power, would be like a great body without feet ; * like the knowledge of a
pilot that hath lost his arm, who, though he knows the rule of navigation,
and what course to follow in his voyage, yet cannot manage the helm. But
when those two, wisdom and power, are linked together, there ariseth from
both a fitness for government. There is wisdom to propose an end, and
both wisdom and power to employ means that conduct to that end. And
therefore, when God demonstrates to Job his right of government, and the
unreasonableness of Job's quarrelling with his proceedings, he chiefly urgeth
upon him the consideration of those two excellencies of his nature, power
and wisdom, which are expressed in his works, chap, xxxviii.-xli. A prince
without wisdom, is but a title without a capacity to perform the office ; no
man without it is fit for government. Nor could God, without wisdom,
exercise a just dominion in the world. He hath therefore the highest wisdom,
since he is the universal governor. That wisdom which is able to govern a
family, may not be able to govern a city ; and that wisdom which governs a
city, may not be able to govern a nation or kingdom, much less a world.
The bounds of God's government being greater than any, his wisdom for
government must needs surmount the wisdom of all. And though the crea-
tures be not in number actually infinite, yet they cannot be well governed
but by one endowed with infinite discretion. f Providential government can
be no more without infinite wisdom, than infinite wisdom can be without
providence.

Reas. 3. The creatures working for an end, without their own knowledge,
demonstrates the wisdom of God that guides them. All things in the world
work for some end ; the ends are unknown to them, though many of their
ends are visible to us. As there was some prime cause, which by his power
inspired them with their several instincts, so there must be some supreme
wisdom which moves and guides them to their end. As their being mani-
fests his power that endowed them, so the acting, according to the rules of
their nature, which they themselves understand not, manifests his wisdom
in directing them ; everything that acts for an end must know that end, or
be directed by another to attain that end. The arrow doth not know who
shoots it, or to what end it is shot, or what mark is aimed at ; but the archer
that puts it in, and darts it out of the bow, knows. A watch hath a regular
motion, but neither the spring nor the wheels that move know the end of
their motion ; no man will judge a wisdom to be in the watch, but in the
artificer that disposed the wheels and spring, by a joint combination to pro-
duce such a motion for such an end. Doth either the sun that enlivens the
earth, or the earth that travails with the plant, know what plant it produceth
in such a soil, what temper it should be of, what fruit it should bear, and
of what colour ? What plant knows its own medicinal qualities, its own
beautiful flowers, and for what use they are ordained ? When it strikes up
its head from the earth, doth it know what proportion of them there will
be ? yet it produceth all these things in a state of ignorance. The sun
warms the earth, concocts the humours, excites the virtue of it, and cherishes
* Amyraut, Moral. t Amyrald. Dissert, Theol., p. 111.

20 chabnock's wobks. [Kom. XVI. 27.

ttie seeds, which are cast into her lap, yet all unknown to the sun or the
earth ; since therefore that nature, that is the immediate cause of those
things, doth not understand its own quality, nor operation, nor the end of
its action, that which thus directs them must be conceived to have an in-
finite wisdom. When things act by a rule they know not, and move for an
end they understand^not, and yet work harmoniously together for one end,
that all of them, we are sure, are ignorant of, it mounts up our minds to
acknowledge the wisdom of that supreme cause that hath ranged all these
inferior causes in their order, and imprinted upon them the laws of their
motions, according to the idea in his own mind, who orders the rule by
■which the}' act, and the end for which they act, and directs every motion
according to their several natures, and therefore is possessed with infinite
wisdom in his own nature.

Reus. 4. God is the fountain of all wisdom in the creatures, and therefore
is infinitely wise himself. As he hath a fulness of being in himself, because
the streams of being are derived to other things from him, so he hath a ful-
ness of wisdom, because he is the spring of wisdom to angels and men.
That being must be infinitely wise, from whence all other wisdom derives its
original, for nothing can be in the efiect which is not eminently in the cause;
the cause is alway more perfect than the effect. If therefore the creatures
are wise, the Creator must be much more wise ; if the Creator were destitute
of wisdom, the creature would be much more perfect than the Creator. If
you consider the wisdom of the spider in her web, which is both her house
and net ; the artifice of the bee in her comb, which is both her chamber and
granary ; the provision of the'pismire in her repositories for corn : the wis-
dom of the Creator is illustrated by them ; whatsoever excellency you see in
any creature is an image of some excellency in God. The skill of the arti-
ficer is visible in the fruits of his art ; a workman transcribes his spirit in
the work of his hands ; but the wisdom of rational creatures, as men, doth
more illustrate it. All arts among men are the rays of divine wisdom shin-
ing upon them, and by a common gift of the Spirit enlightening their minds
to curious inventions, as Prov. viii. 12, * I, Wisdom, find out the knowledge
of witty inventions ; ' that is, I give a faculty to men to find them out ;
without my wisdom all things would be buried in darkness and ignorance.
Whatsoever wisdom there is in the world, it is but a shadow of the wisdom
of God, a small rivulet derived from him, a spark leaping out from un-
created wisdom : Isa. liv. 16, 'He created the smith that bloweth the coals
in the fire, and makes the instruments.' The skill to use those weapons in
warlike enterprises is from him : ' I have created the waster to destroy.' It
is not meant of creating their persons, but communicating to them their art ;
he speaks it there to expel fear from the church of all warlike preparations
against them. He had given men the skill to form and use weapons, and
could as well strip them of it, and defeat their purposes. The art of hus-
bandry is a fruit of divine teaching, Isa. xxviii. 24, 25. If those lower
kinds of knowledge, that are common to all nations, and easily learned by
all, are discoveries of divine wisdom, much more the nobler sciences, intel-
lectual and political wisdom: Dan. ii. 21, * He gives wisdom to the wise,
and knowledge to them that know understanding ; ' speaking of the more
abstruse parts of knowledge, ' The inspiration of the Almighty gives under-
standing,' Job xxxii. 8. Hence the wisdom which Solomon expressed in the
harlot's case, 1 Kings iii. 28, was, in the judgment of all Israel, the wisdom
of God ; that is, a fruit of divine wisdom, a beam communicated to him
from God. Every man's soul is endowed more or less with those noble
qualities. The soul of every man exceeds that of a brute ; if the streams be

Rom. XVI. 27.J god's wisdom. 2T

so excellent, the fountain must be fuller and clearer. The first Spirit must
infinitely more possess what other spirits derive from him by creation ; were
the wisdom of all the angels in heaven, and men on earth, collected in one
spirit, it must be infinitely less that that what is in the spring, for no crea-
ture can be equal to the Creator. As the highest creature already made, or
that we can conceive may be made, by infinite power, would be infinitely be-
low God in the notion of a creature, so it would be infinitely below God in
the notion of wise.

rV. The fourth thing is, wherein the wisdom of God appears.
It appears, 1, in creation ; 2, in government ; 3, in redemption.
1. In creation. As in a musical instrument there is first the skill of the
workman in the frame, then the skill of the musician in stringing it proper
for such musical notes as he will express upon it, and after that the temper-
ing of the strings, by various stops, to a delightful harmony, so is the wisdom
of God seen in framing the world, then in tuning it, and afterwards in the
motion of the several creatures. The fabric of the world is called the wisdom
ofGod: 1 Cor. i. 21, ' After that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom
knew not God,' i.e. by the creation the world knew not God ; the framing
cause is there put for the efiect and the work framed, because the divine
wisdom stepped forth in the creatures to a public appearance, as if it had pre-
sented itself in a visible shape to man, giving instructions in and by the
creatures, to know and adore him. What we translate. Gen. i. 1, 'In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth,' the Targum expresseth,
' In the wisdom God created the heaven and the earth ; ' both bear a stamp
of this perfection on them.* And when the apostle tells the Romans, chap.
i. 20, * The invisible things of God were clearly understood by the things
that are made,' the word he uses is, cro/^/xa<r/, not ipyoii ; this signifies a
work of labour, but "ro/jj/ia a work of skill, or a poem. The whole creation
is a poem, every species a stanza, and every individual creature a verse in
it. The creation presents us with a prospect of the wisdom of God, as a
poem doth the reader with the wit and fancy of the composer : ' By wisdom
he created the earth,' Prov. iii. 19 ; ' and stretched out the heavens by dis-
cretion,' Jer. X. 12. There is not anything so mean, so small, but glitters
with a beam of divine skill ; and the consideration of them would justly
make every man subscribe to that of the psalmist, * 0 Lord, how manifold
are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made them all,' Ps. civ. 24 ; — all, the
least as well as the greatest, and the meanest as well as the noblest, even
those creatures which seem ugly and deformed to us, as toads, &c., because
they fall short of those perfections which are the dowry of other animals.
In these there is a footstep of divine wisdom, since they were not produced
by him at random, but determined to some particular end, and designed to
some usefulness, as parts of the world in their several natures and stations.
God could never have had a satisfaction in the review of his works, and
pronounced them good or comely, as he did. Gen. i. 31, had they not been
agreeable to that eternal original copy in his own mind. It is said he was
refreshed, viz. with that review, Exod. xxxi. 17, which could not have been
if his piercing eye had found any defect in anything which had sprung out
of his hand, or an unsuitableness to that end for which he created them. He
seems to do as a man that hath made a curious and polite work, with exact
care to peer about every part and line, if he could perceive any imperfection
in it, to rectify the mistake ; but no defect was found by the infinitely wise
God upon his second examination.

* Omne opus naturae est opus intelligentise.

2S charnock's works. [Rom. XYI. 27.

This wisdom of the creation appears,

(1.) In the variety, (2.) in the beauty, (3.) the fitness of every creature
for its use, (4.) the subordination of one creature to another, and the joint
concurrence of all to one common end.

(1.) In the variety. Ps. civ. 24, '0 Lord, how manifold are thy works ! '
How great a variety is there of animals and plants, with a great variety of
forms, shapes, figurations, colours, various smells, virtues, and qualities !
And this variety is produced from one and the same matter, as beasts and
plants from the earth: Gen. i. 11, 24, 'Let the earth bring forth living
creatures. And the earth brought forth grass, and the herb yielding seed
after his kind.' Such diversity of fowl and fish from the water : Gen.
i. 20, ' Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath
life, and fowl that may fly.' Such a beautiful and active variety from so dull
a matter as the earth ; so solid a variety from so fluid a matter as the water;
80 noble a piece as the body of man, with such a variety of members, fit to
entertain a more excellent soul as a guest, from so mean a matter as the
dust of the ground. Gen. ii. 7 : this extraction of such variety of forms out
of one single and dull matter is the chemistry of divine wisdom. It is a
greater skill to frame noble bodies of vile matter, as varieties of precious
vessels of clay and earth, than of a noble matter, as gold and silver.

Again, all those varieties propagate their kind in every particular and
quality of their nature, and uniformly bring forth exact copies, according to
the first pattern God made of the kind. Gen. i. 11, 12, 24. Consider also
how the same piece of ground is garnished with plants and flowers of several
virtues, fruits, colours, scents, without our being able to perceive any variety
•in the earth that breeds them, and not so great a difi"erence in the roots that
bear them. Add to this the diversities of birds, of different colours, shapes,
notes ; consisting of various parts, wings, like oars, to cut the air, and tails,
as the rudder of a ship, to guide their motion.

How various also are the endowments of the creatures ! Some have vege-
tation and the power of growth, others have the addition of sense, and others
the excellency of reason ; something wherein all agree, and something
wherein all difi"er ; variety in unity, and unity in variety. The wisdom of
the workman had not been so conspicuous had there been only one degree
of goodness. The greatest skill is seen in the greatest variety.

The comeliness of the body is visible in the variety of members, and their
usefulness to one another. What an inform thing had man been had he
been all ear or all eye ! If God had made all the stars to be suns, it would
have been a demonstration of his power, but perhaps less of his wisdom.
No creatures, with the natures they now have, could have continued in
being under so much heat. There was no less wisdom went to the frame
of the least than to the greatest creature. It speaks more art in a limner
to paint a landscape exactly than to draw the sun, though the sun be a more
glorious body.

I might instance also in the difierent characters and features imprinted
upon the countenances of men and women, the difierences of voices and
statures, whereby they are distinguished from one another. These are the
foundations of order, and of human society, and administration of justice.
What confusion would have been if a grown-up son could not be known
from his father, the magistrate from the subject, the creditor from the
debtor, the innocent from the criminal. The laws God hath given to man-
kind could not have been put in execution. This variety speaks the wis-
dom of God.

(2.) The wisdom of the creation appears in the beauty, and order, and

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 28

situation of the several creatures. Eccles. iii. 11, * He hath made every-
thing beautiful in his time.' As their being was a fruit of divine power, so
their order is a fruit of divine wisdom. All creatures are as members in the
great body of the world, proportioned to one another, and contributing to
the beauty of the whole,* so that if the particular forms of everything, the
union of all for the composition of the world, and the laws which are estab-
lished in the order of nature for its conservation, be considered, it would
ravish us with an admiration of God. All the creatures are as so many
pictures or statues, exactly framed by line : Ps. xix. 4, * Their line is gone
through all the earth.' Their line, a measuring line, or a carpenter's rule,
whereby he proportions several pieces to be exactly linked and coupled to-
gether. Their line, that is, their harmonious proportion, and the instruction
from it, is gone forth through all the earth. Upon the account of this har-
mony, some of the ancient heathens framed the images of their gods with
musical instruments in their hands, signifying that God wrought all things
in a due proportion. f

The heavens speak this wisdom in their order.

The revolutions of the sun and moon determine the seasons of the year,
and make day and night in an orderly succession. The stars beautify the
heavens, and influence the earth, and keep their courses. Judges v. 20.
They keep their stations without interfering with one another ; and though
they have rolled about for so many ages, they observe their distinct laws, and
in the variety of their motions have not disturbed one another's functions.

The sun is set, as the heart, in the midst of this great body, to afford
warmth to all.J Had it been set lower, it had long since turned the earth
into flame and ashes ; had it been placed higher, the earth would have
wanted the nourishment knd refreshment necessary for it. Too miich near-
ness had ruined the earth by parching heat, and too great a distance had
destroyed the earth by starving it with cold.

The sun hath also its appointed motion; had it been fixed without motion,
half of the earth had been unprofitable, there had been perpetual darkness
in a moiety of it, nothing had been produced for nourishment, and so it
had been rendered uninhabitable ; but now, by this motion, it visits all the
climates of the world, runs its circuit, so that ' nothing is hid from the heat
thereof,' Ps. xix. 6. It imparts its virtue to every corner of the world in its
daily and yearly visits. Had it been fixed, the fruits of the earth under it
had been parched and destroyed before their maturity ; but all those incon-
veniences are provided against by the perpetual motion of the sun.

This motion is orderly.§ It makes its daily course from east to west, its
yearly motion from north to south. It goes to the north, till it comes to the
point God hath set it, and then turns back to the south, and gains some
point every day. It never riseth nor sets in the same place one day where
it did the day before. The world is never without its light ; some see it
rising the same moment we see it setting.

The earth also speaks the divine wisdom, It is the pavement of the
world, as the heaven is the ceiling of fretwork.|| It is placed lowermost, as
being the heaviest body, and fit to receive the weightiest matter, and pro-
vided as an habitation proper for those creatures which derive the matter of

* Amyrant, Moral., Vol. I. p. 257.

t Montag. against Selden, p. 281. Plutarch calls God a^fioviKig xal fioveiKog ;
he Baith, NolliiTig was made without music.

t Charlton, Light of Nature, p. 57. § Daille, mel. part i. p. 483.

i Amyraut, Predestin. p. 9.

24 chaknock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

their bodies from it, and partake of its earthy nature ; and garnished with
other creatures for the profit and pleasure of man.

The sea also speaks the same divine wisdom. He ' strengthened the
fountains of the deep: and gave the sea a decree, that it should not pass
his command,' Prov. viii. 28, 29. He hath given it certain bounds that it
should not overflow the earth, Job xxviii. 11. It contains itself in the
situation wherein God hath placed it, and doth not transgress its bounds.
What if some part of a country, a little spot, hath been overflowed by it,
and groaned under its waves, yet for the main, it retains the same channels
wherein it was at first lodged.

All creatures are clothed with an outward beauty, and endowed with an
inward harmony. There is an agreement in all parts of this great body ;
every one is beautiful and orderly ; but the beauty of the world results from
all of them disposed and linked together.

(3.) This wisdom is seen in the fitness of everything for its end, and the
usefulness of it. Divine wisdom is more illustrious in the fitness and use-
fulness of this great variety than in the composure of their distinct parts,
as the artificer's skill is more eminent in fitting the wheels, and setting
them in order for their due motion, than in the external fabric of the mate-
rials which compose the clock.

After the most diligent inspection, there can be found nothing in the
creation unprofitable ; nothing but is capable of some service, either for the
support of our bodies, recreation of our senses, or moral instruction of our
minds. Not the least creature but is formed, and shaped, and furnished
with members and parts in a due proportion for its end and service in the
world ; nothing is superfluous, nothing defective.

The earth is fitted in its parts.* The valleys are appointed for granaries,
the mountains to shadow them from the scorching heat of the sun ; the
rivers, like veins, carry refreshment to every member of this body ; plants
and trees thrive on the face of the earth, and metals are engendered in the
bowels of it for materials for building and other uses for the service of man.
There ' he causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service
of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth,' Ps. civ. 14.

The sea is fitted for use ; it is a fish pond for the nourishment of man, a
boundary for the dividing of lands and several dominions ; it joins together
nations far distant ; a great vessel for commerce : Ps. civ. 26, ' There go
the ships.' It afi"ords vapours to the clouds, wherewith to water the earth,
which the sun draws up, separating the finer from the Salter parts, that the
earth may be fruitful, without being burthened with barrenness by the salt.
The sea hath also its salt, its ebbs and floods ; the one as brine, the other
as motion, to preserve it from putrification, that it may not be contagious to
the rest of the world.

Showers are appointed to refresh the bodies of living creatures, to open
the womb of the earth, and water the ground to make it fruitful, Ps. civ. 3.
The clouds, therefore, are called the ' chariots of God ;' he rides in them in
the manifestation of his goodness and wisdom.

Winds are fitted to purify the air,t to preserve it from putrefaction, to
carry the clouds to several parts to refresh the parched earth and assist her
fruits, and also to serve for the commerce of one nation with another by
navigation. God in his wisdom and goodness ' walks upon the wings of the
wind,' Ps. civ. 3.

Rivers are appointed to bathe the ground, J and render it fresh and lively;

* Amyraut. sur diverses text, p. 127. t Lessius.

t Daille, Melan., part ii. p. 472, 473.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. -25

they fortify cities, are the limits of countries, serve for commerce ; they are
the watering-pots of the earth, and the vessels for drink for the living
creatures that dwell upon the earth. God cut those channels for the wild
asses, the beasts of the desert, which are his creatures as well as the rest,
Ps. civ. 10, 12, 13.

Trees are appointed for the habitation of birds, shadows for the earth,
nourishment for the creatures, materials for building, and fuel for the relief
of man against cold.

The seasons of the year have their use. The winter makes the juice
retire into the earth, fortifies plants, and fixes their roots. It moistens the
earth that was dried before by the heat of the summer, and cleanseth and
prepares it for a new fruitfulness ; the spring calls out the sap in new
leaves and fruit ; the summer consumes the superfluous moisture, and pro-
duceth nourishment for the inhabitants of the world.

The day and night have also their usefulness.* The day gives life to
labour, and is a guide to motion and action : Ps. civ. 23, ' The sun ariseth,
man goeth forth to his labour until the evening.' It warms the air, and
quickens nature. Without day, the world would be a chaos, an unseen
beauty. The night, indeed, casts a veil upon the bravery of the earth, but
it draws the curtains from that of heaven ; though it darkens below, it makes
us see the beauty of the world above, and discovers to us a glorious part of
the creation of God, the tapestry of heaven, and the motion of the stars,
hid from us by the eminent light of the day. It procures a truce from
labour, and refresheth the bodies of creatures, by recruiting the spirits which
are scattered by watching. It prevents the ruin of life, by a reparation of
what was wasted in the day. It takes from us the sight of flowers and
plants, but it washeth their face with dews for a new appearance next
morning. The length of the day and night is not without a mark of wisdom:
were they of a greater length, as the length of a week or month, the one
would too much dry, and the other too much moisten, and for want of
action the members would be stupefied. The perpetual succession of day
and night is an evidence of the divine wisdom, in tempering the travel and
rest of creatures. Hence the psalmist tells us, Ps. Ixxiv. 16, 17, ' The day
is thine, and the night is thine ; thou hast prepared the light of the sun,
and made summer and winter;' i.e. they are of God's framing, not without
a wise counsel and end.

Hence let us ascend to the bodies of living creatures, and we shall find
every member fitted for use. What a curiosity is there in every mdmber !
Every one fitted to a particular use in their situation, form, temper, and
mutual agreement for the good of the whole ; the eye to direct, the ear to
receive directions from others, the hands to act, the feet to move. Every
creature hath members fitted for that element wherein it resides. And in
the body, some parts are appointed to change the food into blood, others
to refine it, and others to distribute and convey it to several parts for the
maintenance of the whole ; the heart to mint vital spirits for preserving life,
and the brain to coin animal spirits for life and motion ; the lungs to serve
for the cooling the heart, which else would be parched as the ground in
summer. The motion of the members of the body by one act of the will,
and also without the will, by a natural instinct, is an admirable evidence of
divine skill in the structure of the body, so that well might the psalmist
cry out, Ps. cxxxix. 14, ' I am fearfully and wonderfully made.'

But how much more of this divine perfection is seen in the soul ! A
nature furnished with a faculty of understanding to judge of things, to gather
* Daille, Melang., part i. p. 477, &c.

26 charnock's works. [Eom. XVI. 27.

in things that are distant, and to reason and draw conclusions from one
thing to another, with a memory to treasure up things that are past, with a
will to apply itself so readily to what the mind judges fit and comely, and
fly so speedily from what it judges ill and hurtful. The whole world is a
stage ; every creature in it hath a part to act, and a nature suited to that
part and end it is designed for ; and all concur in a joint language to publish
the glory of divine wisdom, they have a voice to proclaim the glory of God,
Ps. xis. 1, 3. And it is not the least part of God's skill, in framing the
creatures so, that, upon man's obedience, they are the channels of his good-
ness ; and upon man's disobedience, they can in their natures be the minis-
ters of his justice for the punishing of offending creatures.

(4.) Fourthly, The wisdom is apparent, in the linking all these useful
parts together, so that one is subordinate to the other for a common end.
All parts are exactly suited to one another, and every part to the whole ;
though they are of different natures, as lines distant in themselves, yet they
meet in one common centre, the good and the preservation of the universe.
They are all jointed together, as the word translated framed signifies, Heb.
xi. 3; knit by fit bands and ligaments, to contribute mutual beauty, strength,
and assistance to one another, like so many links of a chain coupled together,
that though there be a distance in place, there is a unity in regard of con-
nection and end, there is a consent in the whole : Hosea ii. 21, 22, ' The
heavens hear the earth, and the earth hears the corn, and the wine, and the
oil.' The heavens communicate their qualities to the earth, and the earth
conveys them to the fruits she bears ; the air distributes light, wind, and
rain to the earth, =;< the earth and the sea render to the air exhalations and
vapours, and all together charitably give to the plants and animals that
which is necessary for their nourishment and refreshment. The influences
of the heavens animate the earth, and the earth affords matter in part for
the influences it receives from the regions above. Living creatures are
maintained by nourishment, nourishment is conveyed to them by the fruits
of the earth, the fruits of the earth are produced by means of rain and heat,
matter for rain and dew is raised by the heat of the sun, and the sun by its
motion distributes heat and quickening virtue to all parts of the earth. So
colours are made for the pleasure of the eye, sounds for the delight of the
ear ; light is formed, whereby the eye may see the one, and air to convey
the species of colours to the eye and sound to the ear. All things are like
the wheels of a watch compacted ; and though many of the creatures be
endowed with contrary qualities, yet they are joined in a marriage knot for
the public security, and subserviency to the preservation and order of the
universe, as the variety of strings upon an instrument, sending forth various
and distinct sounds, are tempered together, for the framing excellent and
delightful airs. In this universal conspiring of the creatures together to
one end, is the wisdom of the Creator apparent, in tuning so many contraries
as the elements are, and preserving them in their order, which, if once
broken, the whole frame of nature would crack, and fall in pieces. All are
so interwoven and inlaid together by the divine workmanship, as to make
np one entire beauty in the whole fabric ; as every part in the body of man
hath a distinct comeliness, ye.i there is, besides, the beauty of the whole,
that results from the union of diverse parts exactly fashioned to one another,
and linked together.

By the way,

Use. How much may we see of the perfection of God in every thing that
presents itself to our eyes ! And how should we be convinced of our un-
* Daille, Serm. xv. p. 170.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 27

worthy neglect of ascending to him with reverent and admiring thoughts,
upon the prospect of the creatures ! What dull scholars are we, when every
creature is our teacher, every part of the creature a lively instruction !
Those things that we tread under our feet, if used by us according to the
full design of their creation, would afford rich matter, not only for our heads,
but our hearts. As grace doth not destroy nature, but elevate it, so neither
should the fresher and fuller discoveries of divine wisdom in redemption,^
deface our thoughts of his wisdom in creation. Though the greater light of
the sun obscures the lesser sparkling of the stars, yet it gives way in the
night to the discovery of them, that God may be seen, known, and con-
sidered in all his works of wonder and miracles of nature. No part of
Scripture is more spiritual than the psalms ; none filled with clearer dis-
coveries of Christ in the Old Testament ; yet how often do the penmen
consider the creation of God, and find their meditations on him to be sweet,
as considered in his works ! Ps. civ. 34, ' My meditation of him shall be
sweet.' When ? Why, after a short history of the goodness and wisdom
of God in the frame of the world, and the species of the creatures.

2. The wisdom of God appears in his government of his creatures. The
regular motion of the creatures speaks for his perfection, as well as the exact
composition of them. If the exquisiteness of the frame conducts us to the
skill of the contriver, the exactness of their order, according to his will and
law, speaks no less the wisdom of the governor. It cannot be thought that
a rash and irrational power presides over a world so well disposed. The
disposition of things hath no less characters of skill, than the creation of
them. No man can hear an excellent lesson upon a lute, but must presently
reflect upon the art of the person that touches it. The prudence of man ap-
pears in wrapping up the concerns of a kingdom in his mind, for the well
ordering of it ; and shall not the wisdom of God shine forth, as he is the
director of the world ?

I shall omit his government of inanimate creatures, and confine the dis-
course to his government of man, as rational, as sinful, as restored.

(1.) In his government of man as a rational creature.

[1.] In the law he gives to man. Wisdom framed it, though will enacted
it. The will of God is the rule of righteousness to us, but the wisdom of
God is the foundation of that rule of righteousness which he prescribes us.
The composure of a musician is the rule of singing to his scholars ;* yet
the consent and harmony in that composure, derives not itself from his will,
but from his understanding ; he would not be a musician, if his composures
were contrary to the rules oif true harmony. So the laws of men are com-
posed by wisdom, though they are enforced by will and authority.

The moral law, which was the law of nature, the law imprinted upon
Adam, is so framed, as to secure the rights of God as supreme, and the
rights of men in their distinctions of superiority and equality. It is there-
fore called holy and good, Rom. vii. 12 : holy, as it prescribes our duty to
God in his worship ; good, as it regulates the ofiices of human life, and pre-
serves the common interest of mankind.

First, It is suited to the nature of man. As God hath given a law of
nature, a fixed order to inanimate creatures, so he hath given a law of reason
to rational creatures. Other creatures are not capable of a law differencing
good and evil, because they are destitute of faculties and capacities to make
distinction between them. It had not been agreeable to the wisdom of God
to propose any moral law to them, who had neither understandmg to dis-
cern, nor will to choose. It is therefore to be observed, that whilst Christ
* Castellio, Dialog. 1. iv. p. 46.

28 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

exhorted others to the embracing his doctrine, yet he exhorted not little
children, though he took them in his arms, because though they had faculties,
yet they were not come to such a maturity, as to be capable of a rational
instruction. But there was a necessity for some command for the govern-
ment of man ; since God had made him a rational creature, it was not agree-
able to his wisdom to govern him as a brute, but as a rational creature,
capable of knowing his precepts, and voluntarily walking in them ; and with-
out a law, he had not been capable of any exercise of his reason in services
respecting God.

He therefore gives him a law with a covenant annexed to it, whereby
man is obliged to obedience, and secured of a reward This was enforced
with severe penalties, — death, with all the horrors attending it, — to deter him
from transgression, Gen, ii. 17, wherein is implied a promise of continuance
of life and all its felicities, to allure him to a mindfulness of his obligation.
So perfect a hedge did divine wisdom set about him, to keep him within the
bounds of that obedience, which was both his debt and security, that where-
soever he looked, he saw either something to invite him, or something to
drive him to the payment of his duty, and perseverance in it. Thus the
law was exactly framed to the nature of man ; man had twisted in him a
desire of happiness ; the promise was suited to cherish this natural desire.
He had also the passion of fear ; the proper object of this was anything
destructive to his being, nature, and felicity ; this the threatening met with.
In the whole it was accommodated to man as rational. Precepts to the law
in his mind, promises to the natural appetite ; threatenings to the most pre-
vailing afi'ection, and to the implanted desires of preserving both his being
and happiness in that being. These were rational motives fitted to the nature
of Adam, which was above the life God had given plants, and the sense he
had given animals.

The command given man in innocence, was suited to his strength and
power ; God gave him not any command, but what he had ability to observe ;
and since we want not power to forbear an apple in our corrupted and im-
potent state, he wanted not strength in his state of integrity. The wisdom
of God commanded nothing, but what was very easy to be observed by him, and
inferior to his natural ability. It had been both unjust and unwise to have
commanded him to fly up to the sun, when he had not wings ; or stop the
course of the sea, when he had not strength.

Secondly, It is suited to the happiness and benefit of man. God's laws
are not an act of mere authority respecting his own glory, but of wisdom
and goodness respecting man's benefit. They are perfective of man's nature,
conferring a wisdom upon him, ' rejoicing his heart, enlightening his eyes,'
Ps. XIX. 7, 8, afibrding him both a knowledge of God and of himself. To be
without a law, is for man to be as beasts, without justice and without religion.
Other things are for the good of the bod}', but the laws of God for the good
of the soul ; the more perfect the law, the greater the benefit. The laws
given to the Jews were the honour and excellency of that nation : Deut. i. 8,
* What nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so right-
eous ?' They were made statesmen in the judicial law, ecclesiastics in the
ceremonial, honest men in the second table, and divine in the first. All his
laws are suited to the true satisfaction of man, and the good of human society.
Had God framed a law only for one nation, there would have been the cha-
racters of a particular wisdom ; but now an universal wisdom appears, in
accommodating his law, not only to this or that particular society or corpo-
ration of men, but to the benefit of all mankind, in the variety of climates
and countries wherein they live. Everything that is disturbing to human

Rom. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 29

society is provided against ; nothing is enjoined but what is sweet, rational,
and useful. It orders us not to attempt anything against the life of our
neighbour, the honour of his bed, propriety in his goods, and the clearness
of his reputation ; and if well observed, would alter the face of the world,
and make it look with another hue. The world would be altered from a
brutish to a human world. It would change lions and wolves, men of lion-
like and wolfish disposition, into reason and sweetness. And because the
whole law is summed up in love, it obligeth us to endeavour the preservation
of one another's beings, the favouring of one another's interests, and increas-
ing the goods, as much as justice will permit, and keeping up one another's
credits ; because love, which is the soul of the law, is not shewn by a cessa-
tion from action, but signifies an order, upon all occasions, in doing good.
I say, were this law well observed, the world would be another thing than it
is. It would become a religious fraternity ; the voice of enmity, and the
noise of groans and cursings, would not be heard in our streets ; peace would
be in all borders, plenty of charity in the midst of cities and countries, joy
and singing would sound in all habitations. Man's advantage was designed
in God's laws, and doth naturally result from the observance of them. God
so ordered them by his wisdom, that the obedience of man should draw forth
his goodness, and prevent those smarting judgments which were necessary
to reduce the creature to order, that would not voluntarily continue in the
order God had appointed. The laws of men are often unjust, oppressive,
cruel, sometimes against the law of nature ; but an universal wisdom and
righteousness glitters in the divine law. There is nothing in it, but what is
worthy of God and useful for the creature ; so that we may well say with
Job, ' Who teaches like God ? ' Job xxxvi. 22, or as some render it, ' Who
is a lawgiver like God ?' who can say to him, Thou hast wrought iniquity,
or folly, among men ? His precepts were framed for the preservation of
man in that rectitude wherein he was created, in that likeness to God wherein
he was first made, that there might be a correspondence between the integrity
of the creature and the goodness of his Creator, by the obedience of man,
that man might exercise his faculties in operations worthy of him, and bene-
ficial to the world.

Thirdly, The wisdom of God is seen in suiting his laws to the consciences,
as well as the interest of all mankind. Rom. ii. 14, ' The Gentiles do by
nature the things contained in the law,' so great an affinity there is between
the wise law and the reason of man.

There is a natural beauty emerging from them, and darting upon the
reasons and consciences of men, which dictates to them that this law is
worthy to be observed in itself. The two main principles of the law, the
love and worship of God, and doing as we would be done by, have an inde-
lible impression in the consciences of all men in regard of the principle,
though they are not suitably expressed in the practice. Were there no law
outwardly published, yet every man's conscience would dictate to him that
God was to be acknowledged, worshipped, loved, as naturally as his reason
would acquaint him that there was such a being as God. This suitableness
of them to the consciences of men is manifest, in that the laws of the best-
governed nations among the heathen have had an agreement with them.
Nothing can be more exactly composed, according to the rules of right and
exact reason, than this ; no man but approves of something in it, yea, of the
whole, when he exerciseth that dim reason which he hath. Suppose any
man, not an absolute atheist, he cannot but acknowledge the reasonableness
of worshipping God. Grant him to be a Spirit, and it will presently appear
absurd to represent him by any corporeal image, and derogate from his ex-

80 charnock's wokks. [Rom. XVI. 27.

cellency by so mean a resemblance. With the same easiness he will grant
a reverence due to the name of God, that we must not serve our turn of him
by calling him to witness to a lie in a solemn oath ; that as worship is due
to him, so some stated time is a circumstance necessary to the performance
of that worship. And as to the second table, will any man in his right
reason quarrel with that command that engageth his inferiors to honour him,
that secures his being from a violent murder, and his goods from unjust rapine ?
And though, by the fury of his lusts, he break the laws of wedlock himself,
yet he cannot but approve of that law, as it prohibits every man from doing
him the like injury and disgrace. The suitableness of the law to the con-
sciences of men, is further evidenced by those furious reflections and strong
alarms of conscience upon a transgression of it, and that in all parts of the
world, more or less in all men ; so exactly hath divine wisdom fitted the law
to the reason and consciences of men, as one tally to another. Indeed,
without such an agreement, no man's conscience could have any ground for
a hue and cry, nor need any man be startled with the records of it. This
manifests the wisdom of God in framing his law so, that the reasons and
consciences of all men do one time or other subscribe to it. What governor
in the world is able to make any law, distinct from this revealed by God,
that shall reach all places, all persons, all hearts ?

We may add to this, the extent of his commands in ordering goodness at
the root, not only in action but affection, not only in the motion of the
members, but the disposition of the soul, which, suiting a law to the inward
frame of man, is quite out of the compass of the wisdom of any creature.

Fourtldy. His wisdom is seen in the encouragements he gives for the
studying and observing his will : Ps. xis. 11, * In keeping the commandments
there is great reward.' The variety of them : there is not any particular
genius in man, but may find something suitable to win upon him in the re-
vealed will of God. There is a strain of reason to suit the rational, of elo-
quence to gratify the fanciful, of interest to allure the selfish, of terror to
startle the obstinate. As a skilful angler stores himself with baits, according
to the appetites of the sorts of fish he intends to catch, so in the word of
God there are varieties of baits, according to the varieties of the inclinations
of men : threatenings, to work upon fear ; promises, to work upon love ;
examples of holy men set out for imitation, and those plainly ; neither his
threatenings nor his promises are dark, as the heathen oracles, but peremp-
tory, as becomes a sovereign lawgiver, and plain, as was necessary for the
understanding of a creature. As he deals graciously with men, in exhorting
and encouraging them, so he deals wisely herein, by taking away all excuse
from them, if they ruin the interest of their souls by denying obedience to
their sovereign.

Again, the rewards God proposeth are accommodated, not to the brutish
parts of man, his carnal sense and fleshly appetite, but to the capacity of a
spiritual soul, which admits only of spiritual gratifications, and cannot, in its
own nature, without a sordid subjection to the humours of the body, be
moved by sensual proposals. God backs his precepts with that which the
nature of man longed for, and with spiritual delights, which can only satisfy
a rational appetite ; and thereby did as well gratify the noblest desires in
man, as oblige him to the noblest service and work.* Indeed, virtue and
holiness, being perfectly amiable, ought chiefly to aflect our understandings,
and by them draw our wills to the esteem and pursuit of them. But since
the desire of happiness is inseparable from the nature of man, as impossible
to be disjoined, as an inclination to descend to be severed from heavy bodies,
* Amyraut.

Bom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 31'

or an instinct to ascend from light and airy substances, God serv es himself
of the inclination of our natures to happiness, to engender in us an esteem
and aflfection to the holiness he doth require. He proposeth the enjoyment
of a supernatural good and everlasting glory, as a bait to that insatiable
longing our natures have for happiness, to receive the impression of holiness
into our souls. And besides, he doth proportion rewards according to the
degrees of men's industry, labour, and zeal for him ; and weighs out a recom-
pence, not only suited to, but above the service. He that improves five
talents* is to be ruler over five cities, that is, a greater proportion of honour
and glory than another, Luke xix. 17, 18. As a wise father excites the
affection of his children to things worthy of praise, by varieties of recom-
pences according to their several actions. Ajid it was the wisdom of the
steward, in the judgment of our Saviour, to give every one the portion that
belonged to him, Luke xii. 42. There is no part of the word wherein we
meet not with the will and wisdom of God, varieties of duties, and varieties
of encouragement mingled together.

Fifthly, The wisdom of God is seen in fitting the revelations of his will to
after times, and for the preventing of the foreseen corruptions of men. The
whole revelation of the mind of God is stored with wisdom, in the words,
connection, sense; it looks backwards to past, and forwards to ages to come.
A hidden wisdom lies in the bowels of it, like gold in a mine.

The Old Testament was so composed as to fortify the New, when God
should bring it to light. The foundations of the gospel were laid in the law.
The predictions of the prophets, and figures of the law, were so wisely
framed and laid down in such clear expressions, as to be proofs of the
authority of the New Testament, and convictions of Jesus his beinc the
Messiah, Luke xxiv. 27. Things concerning Christ were written in Moses,
the prophets, and Psalms, and do to this day stare the Jews so in the face,
that they are fain to invent absurd and nonsensical interpretations to excuse
their unbelief, and continue themselves in their obstinate blindness. And
in pursuance of the efiicacy of those predictions, it was a part of the wisdom
of God to bring forth the translation of the Old Testament (by the means of
Ptolemy, king of Egypt, some hundreds of years before the coming of Christ)
into the Greek language, the tongue the most known in the world ; and why ?
To prepare the Gentiles, by the reading of it, for that gracious call he
intended them, and for the entertainment of the gospel, which some few
years after was to be published among them ; that by reading the predic-
tions so long before made, they might more readily receive the accomplish-
ment of them in their due time.

The Scripture is written in such a manner as to obviate errors foreseen by
God to enter into the church. It may be wondered why the universal
particle should be inserted by Christ, in the giving the cup in the supper,
which was not in the distributing the bread: Mat. xxvi. 27, ' Drink ye ail of
it ; ' not at the distributing the bread, eat you all of it. And Mark in his
relation tells us, ' They all drank of it,' Mark xi. 23. The Church of Rome
hath been the occasion of discovering to us the wisdom of our Saviour in
inserting that particle all, since they were so bold to exclude the com-
municants from the cup by a trick of concomitancy. Christ foresaw the
error, and therefore put in a little word to obviate a great invasion. And
the Spirit of God hath particularly left upon record that particle, as we may
reasonably suppose, to such a purpose. And so in the description of the
blessed virgin, Luke i. 27. There is nothing of her holiness mentioned,

* Thpre seems to be here a confusion of the parable in Luke xix. with that in
Mat. XXV. — Ed.

32 chaknock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

■which is with much diligence recorded of Elizabeth : ver. 6, ' Righteous,
walking in all the commandments of God blameless ; ' probably to prevent
the superstition which God foresaw would arise in the world. And we do
not find more undervaluing speeches uttered by Christ to any of his dis-
ciples in the exercise of his office than to her, except to Peter. As when
she acquainted him with the want of wine at the marriage in Cana, she
receives a slighting answer: 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?'
John ii. 4. And when one was admiring the blessedness of her that bare
him, he turns the discourse another way, to pronounce a blessedness rather
belonging to them that hear the word of God, and keep it, Luke xi. 27, 28,
in a mighty wisdom to antidote his people against any conceit of the pre-
valency of the virgin over him in heaven, in the exercise of his mediatory
office.

[2.] As his wisdom appears in his government by his laws, so it appears
in the various inclinations and conditions of men. As there is a distinction
of several creatures, and several qualities in them, for the common good of
the world, so among men there are several inclinations and several abilities,
as donatives from God, for the common advantage of human society ; as
several channels cut out from the same river run several ways, and refresh
several soils ; one man is qualified for one employment, another marked out
by God for a ditferent work, yet all of them fruitful to bring in a revenue of
glory to God, and a harvest of profit to the rest of mankind. How unuse-
ful would the body be, if it had but one member ! 1 Cor. xii. 19. How
unprovided would a house be, if it had not vessels of dishonour as well as of
honour ! The corporation of mankind w^ould be as much a chaos, as the
matter of the heavens and the earth was before it was distinguished by
several forms breathed into it at the creation. Some are inspired with a
particular genius for one art, some for another ; every man hath a distinct
talent. If all were husbandmen, where would be the instruments to plough
and reap ? If all were artificers, where would they have corn to nourish
themselves ? All men are like vessels, and parts in the body, designed for
distinct offices and functions for the good of the whole, and mutually return
an advantage to one another.

As the variety of gifts in the church is a fruit of the wisdom of God, for
the preservation and increase of the church, so the variety of inclinations
and employments in the world is a fruit of the wisdom of God, for the
preservation and subsistence of the world by mutual commerce. What the
apostle largely discourseth of the former, in 1 Cor. xii., may be applied to
the other.

The various conditions of men is also a fruit of divine wisdom. Some
are rich, and some poor ; the rich have as much need of the poor as the
poor have of the rich. If the poor depend upon the rich for their liveli-
hood, the rich depend upon the poor for their conveniencies. Many arts
would not be learned by men if poverty did not oblige them to it, and many
would faint in the learning of them if they were not thereunto encouraged
by the rich.

The poor labour for the rich, as the earth sends vapours into the vaster
and fuller air, and the rich return advantages again to the poor, as the clouds
do the vapours in rain upon the earth. As meat would not aftbrd a
nourishing juice without bread, and bread without other food would immo-
derately fill the stomach, and not be well digested, so the rich would be
unprofitable in the commonwealth without the poor, and the poor would be
burdensome to a commonwealth without the rich. The poor could not be
easily governed without the rich, nor the rich sufficiently and conveniently

Rom. XVI. 27.J god's wisdom. 33

provided for without the poor. If all were rich, there would be no objects
for the exercise of a noble part of charity ; if all were poor, there were no
matter for the exercise of it. Thus the divine wisdom planted various
inclinations, and diversified the conditions of men for the public advantages
of the world.

(2.) God's wisdom appears in the government of men as fallen and sinful,
or in the government of sin. After the law of God was broke, and sin
invaded and conquered the world, divine wisdom had another scene to act
in, and other methods of government were necessary. The wisdom of God
is then seen in ordering those jarring discords, drawing good out of evil,
and honour to himself out of that which in its own nature tended to the
supplanting of his glory. God being a sovereign good would not suffer so
great an evil to enter, but to serve himself of it for some greater end ; for all
his thoughts are full of goodness and wisdom.

Now though the permission of sin be an act of his sovereignty, and the
punishment of sin be an act of his justice, yet the ordination of sin to good
is an act of his wisdom, whereby he doth dispose the evil, overrules the
malice, and orders the events of it to his own purposes. Sin in itself is a
disorder, and therefore God doth not permit sin for itself ; for in its own
nature it hath nothing of amiableness, but he wills it for some righteous
end, which belongs to the manifestation of his glory, which is his aim in all
the acts of his will ; he wills it not as sin, but as his wisdom can order it to
some greater good than was before in the world, and make it contribute to
the beauty of the order he intends. As a dark shadow is not delightful and
pleasant in itself, nor is drawn by a painter for any amiableness there is in
the shadow itself, but as it serves to set forth that beauty which is the main
design of his art, so the glorious effects which arise from the entrance of
sin into the world are not from the creatures' evil, but the depths of divine
wisdom.

Particularly,

[1.] God's wisdom is seen in the bounding of sin. As it is said of ' the
wrath of man, it shall praise him, and the remainder of wrath God doth
restrain,' Ps. Ixxvi. 10. He sets limits to the boiling corruption of the heart,
as he doth to the boisterous waves of the sea : ' Hitherto shalt thou go, and
no further.' As God is the rector of the world, he doth so restrain sin, so
temper and direct it, as that human society is preserved, which else would be
overflown with a deluge of wickedness, and ruin would be brought upon all
communities. The world would be a shambles, a brothel-house, if God by
his wisdom and goodness did not set bars to that wickedness which is in the
hearts of men. The whole earth would be as bad as hell. Since the heart
of man is a hell of corruption, by that the souls of all men would be excited to
the acting the worst villanies ; since ' every thought of the heart of man is
only evil, and that continually,' Gen. vi. 5 ; if the wisdom of God did not
stop these flood-gates of evil in the hearts of men, it would overflow the
world, and frustrate all the gracious designs he carries on among the sons of
men. Were it not for this wisdom, every house would be filled with violence,
as well as every nature is with sin. What harm would not strong and
furious beasts do, did not the skill of man tame and bridle them ? How
often hath divine wisdom restrained the viciousness of human nature, and
let it run, not to that point they designed, but to the end he proposed !
Laban's fury, and Esau's enmity against Jacob were pent in within bounds
for Jacob's safety, and their hearts overruled from an intended destruction
of the good man to a perfect amity. Gen. xxxi. 29, and Gen. xxxii.

[2.] God's wisdom is seen in the bringing glory to himself out of sin.

VOL. II. C

8-i chaknock's woeks. [Rom. XVI. 27.

First, Out of sin itself. God erects the trophies of honour upon that,
which is a natural means to hinder and deface it. His glorious attributes
are drawn out 'to our view upon the occasion of sin, which otherwise had
lain hid in his own being. Sin is altogether black and abominable ; but by
the admirable wisdom of God, he hath drawn out of the dreadful darkness
of sin, the saving beams of his mercy, and displayed his grace in the incarna-
tion and passion of his Son for the atonement of sin. Thus he permitted
Adam's fall, and wisely ordered it, for a fuller discovery of his own nature,
and a higher elevation of man's good, that ' as sin reigned to death, so might
grace reign through righteousness to eternal life, by Jesus Christ,' Rom.
V. 21. The unbounded goodness of God could not have appeared without
it. His goodness in rewarding innocent obedience would have been mani-
fested, but not his mercy in pardoning rebellious crimes. An innocent
creature is the object of the rewards of grace, as the standing angels are
under the beams of grace ; but not under the beams of mercy, because they
were never sinful, and consequently never miserable. Without sin the
creature had not been miserable. Had man remained innocent, he had not
been the subject of punishment ; and without the creature's misery, God's
mercy in sending his Son to save his enemies could not have appeared.
The abundance of sin is a passive occasion for God to manifest the abun-
dance of his grace.

The power of God in the changing the heart of a rebellious creature had
not appeared, had not sin infected our nature. We had not clearly known
the vindictive justice of God had no crime been committed, for that is the
proper object of divine wrath. The goodness of God could never have per-
mitted justice to exercise itself upon an innocent creature, that was not
guilty either personally or by imputation : Ps. xi. 7, ' The righteous Lord
loveth righteousness ; his countenance doth behold the upright.' Wisdom
is illustrious hereby. God suffered man to fall into a mortal disease, to
shew the virtue of his own restoratives to cure sin, which in itself is incur-
able by the art of any creature ; and otherwise this perfection, whereby God
draws good out of evil, had been utterly useless, and would have been desti-
tute of an object wherein to discover itself.

Again, wisdom, in ordering a rebellious headstrong world to its own ends,
is greater than the ordering an innocent world, exactly observant of his pre-
cepts, and complying with the end of the creation. Now, without the
entrance of sin, this wisdom had wanted a stage to act upon. Thus God
raised the honour of his wisdom, while man ruined the integrity of his
nature ; and made use of the creature's breach of his divine law, to establish
the honour of it in a more signal and stable manner, by the active and pas-
sive obedience of the Son of his bosom. Nothing serves God so much as
an occasion of glorifying himself, as the entrance of sin into the world ; by
this occasion God communicates to us the knowledge of those perfections of
his nature, which had else been folded up from us in an eternal night : his
justice had lain in the dark, as having nothing to punish ; his mercy had
been obscure, as having none to pardon ; a great part of his wisdom had
been silent, as having no such object to order.

Secondly, His wisdom appears in making use of sinful instruments. He
uses the malice and enmity of the devil to bring about his own purposes,
and makes the sworn enemy of his honour contribute to the illustrating of
it against his will. This great crafts-master he took in his own net, and
defeated the devil by the devil's malice, by turning the contrivances he had
hatched and accomplished against man, against himself. He used him as a
tempter, to grapple with our Saviour in the wilderness, whereby to make him

Eoji. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 35

fit to succour us ; and as the God of this world, to inspire the wicked Jews
to crucify him, whereby to render him actually the Redeemer of the world,
and so made him an ignorant instrument of that divine glory he designed
to ruin.

It is more skill to make a curious piece of workmanship with ill-condi-
tioned tools, than with instruments naturally fitted for the work. It is no
such great wonder for a limner to draw an exact piece with a fit pencil and
suitable colours, as to begin and perfect a beautiful work with a straw and
water, things improper for such a design.* This wisdom of God is more
admirable and astonishing, than if a man were able to rear a vast palace by
fire, whose nature is to consume combustible matter, not to erect a building.

To make things serviceable, contrary to their own nature, is a wisdom
peculiar to the Creator of nature. God's making use of devils, for the glory
of his name, and the good of his people, is a more amazing piece of wisdom
than his goodness in employing the blessed angels in his work. To promise
that ' the world' (which includes the God of the world), and ' death,' and
' things present,' let them be as evil as they will, should be ' ours,' that is,
for oar good, and for his glory, is an act of goodness ; but to make them
serviceable to the honour of Christ, and the good of his people, is a wisdom
that may well raise our highest admirations, 1 Cor. iii. 22. They are for
believers, as they are for the glory of Christ, and as Christ is for the glory
of God.

To chain up Satan wholly, and frustrate his wiles, would be an argument
of divine goodness ; but to sufier him to run his risk, and then improve all
his contrivances for his own glorious and gracious ends and purposes, mani-
fests, besides his power and goodness, his wisdom also. He uses the sins
of evil instruments for the glory of his justice, Isa. x. 5-7. Thus he served
himself of the ambition and covetousness of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and
Romans, for the correction of his people and punishment of his rebels ; just
as the Roman magistrates used the fury of lions and other wild beasts, in
their theatres, for the punishment of criminals. The lions acted their natu-
ral temper in tearing those that were exposed to them for a prey ; but the
intent of the magistrates was to punish their crimes. The magistrate
inspired not the lions with their rage, that they had from their natures ; but
served themselves of that natural rage to execute justice,

Thirdbj, God's wisdom is seen in bringing good to the creature out of sin.
He hath ordered sin to such an end as man never dreamt of, the devil
never imagined, and sin in its own nature could never attain. Sin in its own
nature tends to no good, but that of punishment, whereby the creature is
brought into order. It hath no relation to the creature's good in itself, but
to the creature's mischief; but God, by an infinite act of wisdom, brings
good out of it to the creature, as well as glory to his name, contrary to the
nature of the crime, the intention of the criminal, and the design of the
tempter.

God willed sin, that is, he willed to permit it, that he might communicate
himself to the creature in the most excellent manner. He willed the per-
mission of sin, as an occasion to bring forth the mystery of the incarnation
and passion of our Saviour ; as he permitted the sin of Joseph's brethren,
that he might use their evil to a good end. He never, because of his holi-
ness, wills sin as an end ; but, in regard of his wisdom, he wills to pennit
it as a means and occasion. And thus to draw good out of those things which
are in their own nature most contrary to good, is the highest pitch of
wisdom.

* Mouliu's Serin. Decad. x. p. 231, 232.

36 chaenock's works. [Rom. XYI. 27.

First, The redemption of man in so excellent a way was drawn from
the occasion of sin. The greatest blessing that ever the world was blessed
with, was ushered in by contrarieties, by the lust and irregular aft'ection of
man ; the first promise of the Redeemer by the fall of Adam, Gen. iii. 15,
and the bruising the heel of that promised seed, by the blackest tragedy
acted by wicked rebels, the treachery of Judas, and the rage of the Jews ;
the highest good hath been brought forth by the gi-eatest wickedness. As
God out of the chaos of rude and indigested matter framed the first crea-
tion, so from the sins of men, and malice of Satan, he hath erected the
everlasting scheme of honour in a new creation of all things by Jesus Christ.

The devil inspired man to content his own fury in the death of Christ,
and God ordered it to accomplish his own design of redemption in the
passion of the Redeemer. The devil had his diabolical ends, and God
overpowers his action to serve his own divine ends. The person that
betrayed him was admitted to be a spectator of the most private actions of
our Saviour, that his innocence might be justified ; to shew that he was not
afraid to have his enemies judges of his most retired privacies. While they
all thought to do their own wills, divine wisdom orders them to do God's
will : Acts ii. 23, ' Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified
and slain.' And wherein the crucifiers of Christ sinned, in shedding the
richest blood, upon their repentance they found the expiation of their crimes,
and the discovery of a superabundant mercy. Nothing but blood was aimed
at by them ; the best blood was shed by them, but infinite wisdom makes
the cross the scene of his own righteousness, and the womb of man's recovery.

By the occasion of man's lapsed state there was a way open to raise man
to a more excellent condition than that whereinto he was put by creation.
And the depriving man of the happiness of an earthly paradise, in the way
of justice, was an occasion of advancing him to a heavenly felicity, in a way
of grace. The violation of the old covenant occasionally introduced a
better ; the loss of the first integrity ushered in a more stable righteousness,
an * everlasting righteousness,' Dan. ix. 24. And the falling of the fijst
head was succeeded by one whose standing could not but be eternal.

The fall of the devil was ordered by infinite wisdom, for the good of that
body from which he fell. It is supposed by some that the devil was the
chief angel in heaven, the head of all the rest ; and that he falling, the
angels were left as a body without a head ; and after he had politically
beheaded the angels, he endeavoured to destroy man, and rout him out of
paradise. But God takes the opportunity to set up his Son as the head of
angels and men. And thus whilst the devil endeavoured to spoil the cor-
poration of angels, and make them a body contrary to God, God makes
angels and men one body under one head for his service.

The angels in losing a defectible head attained a more excellent and
glorious head in another nature, which they had not before ; though of a
lower nature in his humanity, yet of a more glorious nature in his divinity ;
from whence many suppose they derive their confirming grace, and the
stability of their standing. All things in heaven and earth are gathered
together in Christ, Eph. i. 10, avay.i:pa\arjjGa6dai ; all united in him and
reduced under one head. That though our Saviom- be not properly their
redeemer, for redemption supposeth captivity, yet in some sense he is their
head and mediator ; so that now the inhabitants of heaven and earth are
but one family, Eph. iii. 15, And the innumerable company of angels are
parts of that heavenly and triumphant Jerusalem, and that general assembly,
whereof Jesus Christ is mediator, Heb. xii. 22, 23.

Roii, XYI. 27.] god"s wisdom. 37

Secondly, The good of a nation often, by the skill of divine wisdom, is
promoted by the sins of some men. The patriarchs' selling Joseph to the
Midianites, Gen. xxxvii. 28, was without question a sin, and a breach of
natural aflection ; yet by God's wise ordination it proved the safety of the
whole church of God in the world, as well as the Egyptian nation, Gen.
xlv. 5, 8, and 1. 30.

The Jews' unbelief was a step whereby the Gentiles arose to the know-
ledge of the gospel ; as the setting of the sun in one place is the rising of
it in another. Mat. xxii. 9. He uses the corruptions of men instrumentally
to propagate his gospel ; he built up the true church by the preaching of
' some out of envy,' Philip, i. 15, as he blessed Israel out of the mouth of a
false prophet, Num. xxiii. How often have the heresies of men been the
occasion of clearing up the truth of God, and fixing the more Hvely impres-
sions of it on the hearts of believers.

Neither Judah nor Tamar, in their lust, dreamt of a stock for the
Redeemer ; yet God gave a son from that unlawful bed, whereof Christ
came according to the liesh, Gen. xxxviii. 29 compared with Mat. i. 3.

Jonah's sin was probably the first and remote occasion of the Ninevites
giving credit to his prophecy ; his sin was the cause of his punishment, and
his being flung into the sea might facilitate the reception of his message,
and excite the Ninevites' repentance, whereby a cloud of severe judgment
was blown away from them.

It is thought by some, that when Jonah passed through the streets of
Nineveh with his proclamation of destruction, he might be known by some
of the mariners of that ship from whence he was cast overboard into the
sea, and might after their voyage be occasionally in that city, the metropoUs
of the nation, and the place of some of their births ; and might acquaint
the people that this was the same person they had cast into the sea by his
own consent, for his acknowledged running from the presence of the Lord ;
for that he had told them, Jonah i. 10, and the mariners' prayer, ver. 14,
evidenceth it ; whereupon they might conclude his message worthy of belief,
since they knew from such evidences that he had sunk into the bowels of
the waters, and now saw him safe in their streets by a deliverance unknown
to them ; and that therefore that power that delivered him could easily
verify his word in the threatened judgment.

Had Jonah gone at first without committing that sin and receiving that
punishment, his message had not been judged a divine prediction, but a
fruit of some enthusiastic madness. His sin upon this account was the
first occasion of averting a judgment from so great a city.

Thirdly, The good of the sinner himself is sometimes promoted by divine
wisdom ordering the sin. As God had not permitted sin to enter upon the
world, unless to bring glory to himself by it, so he would not let sin remain
in the little world of a believer's heart, if he did not intend to order it for
his good. What is done by man to his damage and disparagement is directed
by divine wisdom to his advantage ; not that it is the intent of the sin or
the sinner, but it is the event of the sin by the ordination of divine wisdom
and grace.

As without the wisdom of God permitting sin to enter into the world
some attributes of God had not been experimentally known, so some graces
could not have been exercised ; for where had there been an object for that
noble zeal, in vindicating the glory of God, had it not been invaded by an
enemy ? The intenseness of love to him could not have been so strong had
we not an enemy to hate for his sake. Where had there been any place ior
that noble part of charity, in holy admonitions and compassion to the souls

38 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

of our neighbours, and endeavours to reduce them out of a destructive to a
happy path ? HumiUty would not have had so many grounds for its growth
and exercise, and holy sorrow had had no fuel.

And as without the appearance of sin, there had been no exercise of the
patience of God, so without afflictions, the fruits of sin, there had been no
ground for the exercise of the patience of a Christian, one of the noblest
parts of valour. Now sin being evil, and such as cannot but be evil, hath
no respect in itself to any good, and cannot work a gracious end, or anything
profitable to the creature ; nay, it is a hindrance to any good, and therefore
what good comes from it is accidental, occasioned indeed by sin, but efficiently
caused by the over-ruling wisdom of God, taking occasion thereby to display
itself and the divine goodness.

The sins and corruptions remaining in the heart of a man, God orders
for good, and there are good efiects by the direction of his wisdom and grace.

As the soul respects God.

1st, God often brings forth a sensibleness of the necessity of depend-
ence on him. The nurse often lets the child slip, that it may the better
know who supports it, and may not be too venturous and confident of
its own strength. Peter would trust in habitual grace, and God suffers
him to fall, that he might trust more in' assisting grace : Mat. xxvi. 35,
« Though I should die with thee, yet I will not deny thee.' God leaves
sometimes the brightest souls in an eclipse, to manifest that their holiness,
and the preservation of it, depend upon the darting out his beams upon
them.

As the falls of men are the effects of their coldness and remissness in acts
of faith and repentance, so the fruit of these falls is often a running to him
for refuge, and a deeper sensibleness where their security lies. It makes us
lower our swelling sails, and come under the lee and protection of divine
grace. When the pleasures of sin answer not the expectations of a revolted
creature, he reflects upon his former state, and sticks more close to God,
when before God had little of his company : Hosea ii. 7, ' I will return to
my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.'

As God makes the sins of men sometimes an occasion of their conversion,
so he sometimes makes them an occasion of a further conversion. Onesimus
run from Philemon, and was met with by Paul, who proved an instrument
of his conversion : Philem. 10, ' My son Onesimus, whom I have begotten
in my bonds.* His flight from his master was the occasion of his regenera-
tion by Paul, a prisoner.

The falls of believers God orders to their further stability. He that is
fallen for want of using his staff", will lean more upon it to preserve himself
from the like disaster.

God, by permitting the lapses of men, doth often make them despair of
their own strength to subdue their enemies, and rely upon the strength of
Christ, wherein God hath laid up power for us, and so become stronger in
that strength which God hath ordained for them.

We are very apt to trust in ourselves, and have confidence in our own
worth and strength ; and God lets loose corruptions to abate this swelling
humour. This was the reason of the apostle Paul's ' thorn in the flesh,'
2 Cor. xii. 9, whether it were a temptation, or corruption, or sickness, that
he might be sensible of his own inability, and where the sufficiency of grace
for him was placed.

He that is in danger of drowning, and hath the waves come over his
head, will with all the might he hath, lay hold upon anything near him,
which is capable to save him. God lets his people sometimes sink into such

Rom. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 39

a condition, that they may lay the faster hold on him who is ' near to all
that call upon him.'

2dly, God hereby raiseth higher estimations of the value and virtue of
the blood of Christ. As the great reason why God permitted sin to enter '
into the world, was to honour himself in the Redeemer, so the continuance
of sin, and the conquests it sometimes makes in renesved men, are to honour
the infinite value and virtue of the Redeemer's merit, which God from the
beginning intended to magnify : the value of it, in taking off so much
successive guilt ; and the virtue of it, in washing away so much daily filth.

The wisdom of God hereby keeps up the credit of imputed righteousness,
and manifests the immense treasure of the Redeemer's merit to pay such daily
debts. Were we perfectly sanctified, we should stand upon our own bottom,
and imagine no need of the continual and repeated imputation of the right-
eousness of Christ for our justification. We should confide in inherent
righteousness, and slight imputed.

If God should take ofi" all remainders of sin, as well as the guilt of it, we
should be apt to forget that we are fallen creatures, and that we had a Re-
deemer. But the relics of sin in us, mind us of the necessity of some higher
strength to set us right. They mind us both of our own misery and the
Redeemer's perpetual benefit. God by this keeps up the dignity and honour
of our Saviour's blood to the height, and therefore sometimes lets us see, to
our own cost, what filth yet remains in us for the employment of that blood,
which we should else but little think of, and less admire. Our gratitude is
so small to God, as well as man, that the first obligations are soon forgot,
if we stand not in need of fresh ones successively to second them ; we should
lose our thankful remembrance of the first virtue of Christ's blood in wash-
ing us, if our infirmities did not mind us of fresh reiterations and applica-
tions of it.

Our Saviour's ofiice of advocacy was erected especially for sins committed
after a justified and renewed state, 1 John ii. 1. We should scarce remem-
ber we had an advocate, and scarce make use of him, without some sensible
necessity ; but our remainders of sin discover our impotency, and an impos-
sibility for us either to expiate our sin, or conform to the law, which neces-
sitates us to have recourse to that person whom God hath appointed, to make
up the breaches between God and us.

So the apostle wraps up himself in the covenant of grace and his interest
in Christ, after his conflict with sin: Rom. vii. 25, 'I thank God through
Jesus Christ.' ' Now,' after such a body of death, a principle within me
that sends up daily steams ; yet as long as I serve God with my mind, as
long as I keep the main condition of the covenant, ' there is no condemna-
tion,' chap. viii. 1. Christ takes my part, procures my acceptance, and
holds the band of salvation firm in his hands. The brightness of Christ's
grace is set off by the darkness of our sin. We should not understand the
sovereignty of his medicines, if there were no relics of sin for him to exercise
his skill upon. The physician's art is most experimented, and therefore
most valued, in relapses, as dangerous as the former disease. As the wisdom
of God brought our Saviour into temptation, that he might have compassion
to us ; so it permits us to be overcome by temptation, that we might have
due valuations of him.

3dly, God hereby often engageth the soul to a greater industry for his
glory. The highest persecutors, when they have become converts, have
been the greatest champions for that cause they both hated and oppressed.
The apostle Paul is such an instance of this, that it needs no enlargement.
By how much they have failed of answering the end of their creation in

40 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

glorifying God, by so much the more they summon up all their force for
such an end, after their conversion, to restore as much as they can of that
glory to God, which they by their sin had robbed him of. Their sins, by
the order of divine wisdom, prove whetstones to sharpen the edge of their
spirits for God. Paul never remembered his persecuting fury, but he
doubled his industry for the service of God, which before he trampled under
his feet. The further we go back, the greater leap many times we take
forwai'd.

Our Saviour, after his resurrection, put Peter upon the exercise of that love
to him, which had so lately shrunk his head out of suiiering, John xxi. 15-17 ;
and no doubt but the consideration of his base denial, together with a re-
flection upon a gracious pardon, engaged his ingenuous soul to stronger and
fiercer flames of afiection. A believer's courage for God is more sharpened
oftentimes by the shame of his fall. He endeavours to repair the faults of
his ingratitude and disingenuity, by larger and stronger steps of obedience.
As a man in a fight, having been foiled by his enemy, reassumes new
courage by his fall, and is many times obliged to his foil, both for his spirit
and his victory ; a gracious heart will, upon the very motions to sin, double
its vigour, as well as by good ones. It is usually more quickened, both
in its motion to God and for God, by the temptations and motions to sin
which run upon it. This is another good the wisdom of God brings forth
from sin.

4thly, Again, humility towards God is another good divine wisdom brings
forth from the occasion of siu. By this God beats down all good opinion
of ourselves. Hezekiah was more humbled by his fall into pride, than by
all the distress he had been in by Sennacherib's army, 2 Chron. xxxii. 26.
Peter's confidence before his fall, gave way to an humble modesty after it.
You see his confidence, Mark xiv. 29, ' Though all should be offended in
thee, yet will not I ;' and you have the mark of his modesty, John xxi. 17.
It is not then, Lord, I will love thee to the death, I will not start from
thee ; but, ' Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.' I cannot assure myself
of anything after this miscarriage ; but. Lord, thou knowest there is a prin-
ciple of love in me to thy name. He was ashamed that himself, who ap-
peared such a pillar, should bend as meanly as a shrub to a temptation.

The reflection upon sin lays a man as low as hell in his humiliation, as
the commission of sin did in the merit. When David comes to exercise
repentance for his sin, he begins it from the well-head of sin, Ps. h. 5, his
original corruption, and draws down the streams of it to the last commission.
Perhaps he did not so seriously humble himself for the sin of his nature all
his days, so much as at that time ; at least, we have not such evidences of
it. And Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart ; not only for
the pride of his act, 2 Chron. xxxii, 26, but for the pride in the heart,
which was the spring of that pride in act, in shewing his treasures to the
Babylonish ambassadors. God lets sin continue in the hearts of the best
in this world, and sometimes gives the reins to Satan, and a man's own
corruption, to keep up a sense of the ancient sale we made of ourselves
to both.

In regard of ourselves.

Herein is the wonder of divine wisdom, that God many times makes a
sin, which meritoriously fits us for hell, a providential occasion to fit us for
heaven ; when it is an occasion of a more humble faith and believing humi-
lity, and an occasion of a thorough sanctification and growth in grace, which
prepares us for a state of glory.

1st, He makes use of one sin's breaking out to discover more, and so

EoM. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 41

brings us to a self-abhorrency and indignation against sin, the first step to-
wards heaven. Perhaps David, before his gross fall, thought he had no
hj'pocrisy in him. We often find him appealing to God for his integrity,
and desii'ing God to try him, if any guile could be found in his heart, as if
he could find none himself ; but his lapse into that great wickedness makes
him discern much falseness in his soul, when he desii'es God to ' renew a
right spirit ' within him, and speaks of ' truth in the inward parts,' Ps.
li. 6, 10 ; the stirring of one corruption makes all the mud at the bottom
appear, which before a soul did not suspect. No man would think there
were so great a cloud of smoke contained in a little stick of wood, were it not
for the powerful operation of the fire, that both discovers and separates it.
Job, that cursed the day of his birth, and uttered many impatient expres-
sions against God upon the account of his own integrity, upon his recovery
from his afiiiction, and God's close application of himself, was wrought to a
greater abhorrency of himself than ever we read he was exercised in before.
Job xlii. 6. The hostile acts of sin increase the soul's hatred of it, and the
deeper our humiliations are for it the stronger impressions of abhorrency
are made upon us.

'idly, He often orders it, to make conscience more tender, and the soul
more watchful. He that finds by his calamity his enemy to have more
strength against him than he suspected, will double his guards and quicken
his diligence against him. A being overtaken by some sin is, by the wis-
dom of God, disposed to make us more fearful of cherishing any occasion to
inflame it, and watchful against every motion and start of it ; by a fall the
soul hath more experience of the deceitfulness of the heart, and, by observ-
ing its methods, is rendered better able to watch against them. It is our
ignorance of the devices of Satan, and our own hearts, that makes us ob-
noxious to their surprises. A fall into one sin is often a prevention of more
which lay in wait for us. As the fall of a small body into ambush prevents
the design of the enemy upon a greater, as God sutlers heresies in the
church, to try our faith, so he sutlers sins to remain, and sometimes to break
out, to try our watchfulness. This advantage he brings from them, to steel
our resolutions against the same sins, and quicken our circumspection for
the future against new surprises by a temptation. David's sin was * ever
before him,' Ps. li. 3, and made his conscience cry, Blood, blood, upon every
occasion. He refused the water of the well of Bethlehem, 2 Sam. xxiii. 16, 17,
because it was gained with the hazard of lives ; he could endure nothing that
had the taste of blood in it. Our fear of a thing depends much upon a trial
of it ; a child will not fear too near approaches to the fire till he feels the
smart of it.

Mortification doth not wholly suppress the motions of sin, though it doth
the resolutions to commit it ; but that there will be a proneness in the
relics of it, to entice a man into those faults, which, upon sight of their
blemishes, cost him so many tears. As great sicknesses after the cure are
more watched, and the body humoured, that a man might not fall from the
craziness they have left in him, which he is apt to do if relapses are not
carefully provided against. A man becomes more careful of anything that
may contribute to the resurrection of an expired disease.

Mly, God makes it an occasion of the mortification of that sin, which
was the matter of the fall. The liveliness of one sin in a renewed man many
times is the occasion of the death of it. A wild beast, while kept close in
a den, is secure in its life ; but, when it breaks out to rapine, it makes the
master resolve to prevent any further mischief by the death of it. The im-
petuous stirring of a humour in a disease is sometime critical, and a prog-

42 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

Dostic of the strength of nature against it, whereby the disease loseth its
strength by its struggling, and makes room for health to take place by de-
grees. One sin is used by God for the destruction both of itself and others.
As the flesh of a scorpion cures the biting of it, it sometimes, by wounding
us, loseth its sting, and, like the bee, renders itself uncapable of a second
revenge. Peter, after his gross denial, never denied his master afterwards.
The sin that lay undiscovered is, by a fall, become visible, and so more
obvious to a mortifying stroke. The soul lays the faster hold on Christ and the
promise, and goes out against that enemy in the name of that Lord of hosts,
of which he was too negligent of before, and therefore, as he proves more strong,
60 more successful ; he hath more strength because he hath less confidence
in himself, and more in God, the prime strength of his soul. As it was with
Christ, so it is with us ; while the devil was bruising his heel, he was bruis-
ing his head ; and while the devil is bruising our heel, the God of peace and
wisdom is sometimes bruising his head both in us and for us, so that the
strugglings of sin are often as the faint groans or bitings of a beast that is
ready to expire. It is just with a man sometimes as with a running foun-
tain that hath mud at the bottom ; when it is stirred, the mud tinctures and
defiles it all over ; yet some of that mud hath a vent with the streams which
run from it, so that when it is re-settled at the bottom, it is not so much in
quantity as it was before. God by his wisdom weakens the sin, by permit-
ting it to stir and defile.

4:thbj, Sometimes divine wisdom makes it an occasion to promote a
sanctification in all parts of the soul. As the working of one ill-humour in
the body is an occasion of cashiering not only that, but the rest, by a sound
purge ; as a man that is a little cold doth not think of the fire, but if he
slips with one foot into an icy puddle he hastens to the fire, whereby not
only that part, but all the rest, receive a warmth and strength upon that
occasion ; or, as if a person fall into the mire, his clothes are washed, and
by that means cleansed, not only from the filth at present contracted, but
from the former spots that^were before unregarded : God by his wisdom
brings secret sins to a discovery, and thereby cleanseth the soul of them.

David's fall might be ordered as an answer to his former petition : Ps.
xix. 12, * Cleanse thou me from my secret sins ; ' and as he did earnestly
pray after his fall, so no doubt but he endeavoured a thorough sanctifica-
tion : Ps. li. 7, ' Purge me, wash me ; ' and that he meant not only a sanc-
tification from that single sin, but from all root and branch, is evident by
that complaint of the flaw in his nature, ver. 5. The dross and chaff which
lies in the heart is hereby discovered, and an opportunity administered of
throwing it out, and searching all the corners of the heart to discover where
it lay. As God sometime takes occasion from one sin, to reckon with men
in a way of justice for others, so he sometimes takes occasion from the com-
mission of one sin, to bring out all the actions against the sinner, to make
him, in a way of gracious wisdom, set more cordially upon the work of
sanctification.

A great fall sometimes has been the occasion of a man's conversion. The
fall of mankind occasioned a more blessed restoration, and the falls of par-
ticular believers ofttimes occasion a more extensive sanctification. Thus the
only wise God makes poisons in nature to become medicines in a way of
grace and wisdom.

5thly, Hereby the growth in grace is furthered. It is a wonder of
divine wisdom, to subtract sometimes his grace from a person, and let him
fall into sin, thereby to occasion the increase of habitual grace in him, and
to augment it by those ways that seemed to depress it ; by making sins an

Rom. XVI. 27. j god's wisdom. 48

occasion of a more vigorous acting the contrary grace, the wisdom of God
makes our corruptions, in their own nature destructive, to become profitable
to us. Grace often breaks out more strongly afterwards, as the sun doth
with its heat, after it hath been masked and interrupted with a mist ; they
often, through the mighty working of the Spirit, make us more humble, and
humility fits us to receive more grace from God, James iv. 5. How doth
faith, that sunk under the waves, lift up its head again, and carry the soul
out with a greater liveliness ! What ardours of love, what floods of repent-
ing tears, what severity of revenge, what horrors at the remembrance of the
sin, what tremblings at the appearance of a second temptation ! so_ that
grace seems to be awakened to a new and more vigorous life, 2 Cor. vii. 11.
The broken joint is many times stronger in the rupture than it was before ;
the luxuriancy of the branches of corruption is an occasion of purging, and
purging is with a design to make grace more fruitful : John xv. 2, ' He
purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.'

Thus divine wisdom doth both sharpen and brighten us by the dust of
sin, and ripen and mellow the fruits of grace by the dung of corruption.
Grace grows the stronger by opposition, as the fire burns hottest and
clearest when it is most surrounded by a cold air, and our natural heat
reassumes a new strength by the coldness of the winter. The foil under a
diamond, though an imperfection in itself, increaseth the beauty and lustre
of the stone. The enmity of man was a commendation of the grace of
God. It occasioned the breaking out of the grace of God upon us, and is
an occasion, by the wisdom and grace of God, of the increase of grace many
times in us.

How should the consideration of God's incomprehensible wisdom in the
management of evil swallow us up in admiration, who brings forth such
beauty, such eminent discoveries of himself, such excellent good to the
creature, out of the bowels of the greatest contrarieties, making dark shadows
serve to display and beautify to our apprehensions the divine glory ! If evil
were not in the world, men would not know what God is. They would not
behold the lustre of divine wisdom, as without night we could not under-
stand the beauty of the day.

Though God is not the author of sin, because of his holiness, yet he is
the administrator of sin by his wisdom, and accomplisheth his own pur-
poses by the iniquities of his enemies, and the lapses and infirmities of his
friends:

Thus much for the second, the government of man in his lapsed state,
and the government of sin, wherein the wisdom of God doth wonderfully
appear.

(3.) The wisdom of God appears in the government of man in his conver-
sion and return to him. If there be a counsel inframing the lowest crea-
ture, and in the minutest passages of providence, there must needs be a
higher wisdom in the government of the creature to a supernatural end, and
framing the soul to be a monument of his glory. The wisdom of God is
seen with more admirations, and in more varieties by the angels in the
church than in the creation, Eph. iii. 10 ; that is, in forming a church out
of the rubbish of the world, out of contrarieties and contradictions to him,
which is greater than the framing a celestial and elementary world out of a
rude chaos. The most glorious bodies in the world, even those of the sun,
moon, and stars, have not such stamps of divine skill upon them as the soul
of man ; nor is there so much of wisdom in the fabric and faculties of that,
as in the reduction of a blind, wilful, rebellious soul to its own happiness
and God's glory : Eph. i. 11, 12, 'He worketh all things according to the

44 chaenock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

counsel of his own will, that we should be for the praise of his glory.' If all
things, then this, which is none of the least of his works, to the praise of
the glory of his goodness in his work, and to the praise of the rule of his
■work, his counsel, in both the act of his will and the act of his wisdom.
The restoring of the beauty of the soul, and its fitness for its true end,
speaks no less wisdom than the first draught of it in creation. And the
application of redemption, and bringing forth the fruits of it, is as well an act
of his prudence as the contrivance was of his counsel.

Divine wisdom appears,

[1.] In the subjects of conversion. His goodness reigns in the very dust,
and he erects the walls and ornaments of his temple from the clay and mud
of the world. He passes over the wise, and noble, and mighty, that may
pretend some grounds of boasting in their own natural or acquired endow-
ments, and pitches upon the most contemptible materials wherewith to
build a spiritual tabernacle for himself: 1 Cor. i. 26, 27, 'The foolish and
weak things of the world ; ' those that are naturally most unfit for it, and
most refractory to it. Herein lies the skill of an architect, to render the
most knotty, crooked, and inform pieces, by his art, subservient to his main
purpose and design. Thus God hath ordered from the beginning of the
world contrary tempers, various humours, divers nations, as stones of
several natures, to be a building for himself, fitly framed together, and to be
his own family, 1 Cor. iii. 9. Who will question the skill that alters a
black jet into a clear crystal, a glow-worm into a star, a lion into a lamb,
and a swine into a dove ? The more intricate and knotty any business is,
the more eminent is any man's ability and prudence in untying the knots
and bringing it to a good issue. The more desperate the disease, the more
admirable is the physician's skill in the cure.

He pitches upon men for his service who have natural dispositions to
serve him in such ways as he disposeth of them after their conversion. So
Paul was naturally a conscientious man. What he did against Christ was
from the dictates of an erroneous conscience, soaked in the Pharisaical inter-
pretations of the Jewish law. He had a strain of zeal to prosecute what his
depraved reason and conscience did inform him in. God pitches upon this
man, and works him in the fire for his service. He alters not his natural
disposition, to make him of a constitution and temper contrary to what he
was before, but directs it to another object, claps in another bias into the
bowl, and makes his ill-governed dispositions move in a new way of his
own appointment, and guided that natural heat to the service of that interest
which he was before ambitious to extirpate. As a high mettled horse, when
left to himself, creates both disturbance and danger, but under the conduct
of a wise rider moves regularly, not by a change of his natural fierceness,
but a skilful management of the beast to the rider's purpose.

[2.] In the seasons of conversion. The prudence of man consists in the
timing the execution of his counsels; and no less doth the wisdom of God
consist in this. As he is a God of judgment or wisdom, he waits to intro-
duce his grace into the soul in the fittest season.

This attribute Paul, in the story of his own conversion, puts a particular
mark upon, which he doth not upon any other in that catalogue he reckons
up: 1 Tim. i. 17, ' Now, unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
v)ise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.' A most solemn
doxology, wherein wisdom sits upon the throne above all the rest, with a
special amen to the glory of it, which refers to the timing of his mercy so to
Paul, as made most for the glory of his grace, and the encouragement of
others from him as the pattern. God took him at a time when he was upon

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 45

the brink of hell; when he was ready to devour the new-born infant church
at Damascus ; when he was armed with all the authority from without, and
fired with all the zeal from within, for the prosecution of his design, then
God seizeth upon him, and runs him in a channel for his own honour and
his creatures' happiness.

It is observable, which I have upon another occasion noted, how God set
his eye upon Paul all along in his furious course, and lets him have the
reins, without putting out his hand to bridle him, yet no motion he could
take but the eye of God runs along with him. He suHered him to kick
against the pricks of miracles, and the convincing discourse of Stephen at
his martyrdom. There were many that voted for Stephen's death, as the
witnesses that flung the stones first at him ; but they are not named, only
Saul, who testified his approbation as well as the rest, and that by watching
the witnesses' clothes while they were about that bloody work : Acts vii. 58°
' The witnesses laid their clothes at a young man's feet, named Saul.'
Again, though multitudes were consenting to his death, yet. Acts viii. 1, Saul
only is mentioned. God's eye is upon him, yet he would not at that time
stop his fury. He goes on further, and makes havock of the church. Acts
viii. 3. He had surely many more accomplices, but none are named (as if
none regarded with any design of grace) but Saul. Yet God would not
reach out his hand to change him, but eyes him, waiting for a fitter oppor-
tunity, which in his wisdom he did foresee. And therefore, Acts ix. 1, the
Spirit of God adds a. yet : ' Saul yet breathing out threatenings.' It was
not God's time yet, but it would be shortly. But when Saul was putting in
execution his design against the church of Damascus, when the devil was at
the top of his hopes, and Saul in the height of his fury, and the Christians
sunk into the depth of their fears, the wisdom of God lays hold of the
opportunity, and by Paul's conversion at this season, defeats the devil, dis-
appoints the high priests, shields his people, discharges their fears by pull-
ing Saul out of the devil's hands, and forming Satan's instrument to a holy
activity against him.

[3.] The wisdom of God appears in the manner of conversion. So great
a change God makes, not by a destruction, but with a preservation of, and
suitableness to, nature. As the devil tempts us, not by ofliering violence to
our natures, but by proposing things convenient to our corrupt natures, so
doth God solicit us to a return by proposals suited to our faculties. As he
doth in nature convey nourishment to men by means of the fruits of the
earth, and produceth the fruits of the earth by the influences of heaven, the
influences of heaven do not force the earth, but excite that natural virtue
and strength which is in it, so God produceth grace in the soul by the
means of the word, fitted to the capacity of man as man, and proportioned
to his rational faculties as rational.

It would be contrary to the wisdom of God to move man like a stone, to
invert the order and privilege of that nature which he settled in creation,
for then God would in vain have given man understanding and will ; be-
cause, without moving men according to those faculties, they would remain
unprofitable and unuseful in man. God doth not reduce us to himself as
logs, by a mere force, or as slaves forced by a cudgel to go forth to that
place and do that work which they have no stomach to, but he doth accom-
modate himself to those foundations he hath laid in our nature, and guides us
in a way agreeable thereunto by an action as sweet as powerful ;* clearing
our understandings of dark principles, whereby we may see his truth, our
own misery, and the seat of omr happiness, and bending our wills according
* Daillc sur Philip., part i. p. 545, 546.

46 chakxock's wores. [Rom. XYI. 27.

to this light, to desire and move couveniently to this end of our calling ;
efficaciously, yet agreeably ; powerfully, yet without imposing on our natural
faculties ; sweetly,* without violence in ordering the means, but effectually,
without failing in accomplishing the end. And therefore the Scripture
calleth it ' teaching,' John vi. 45, ' alluring,' Hosea ii. 14, ' calling us to
seek the Lord,' Ps. xxvii. 8. Teaching is an act of wisdom, alluring an act
of love, calling an act of authority ; but none of them argue a violent con-
straint. The principle that moves the will is supernatural, but the will, as
a natural faculty, concurs in the act or motion.

God doth not act in this in a way of absolute power, without an infinite
wisdom, suiting himself to the nature of the things he acts upon. He doth
not change the physical nature, though he doth the moral. As in the
government of the world he doth not make heavy things ascend nor light
things descend ordinarily, but guides their motions according to their
natural qualities, so God doth not strain the faculties beyond theii- due
pitch. He lets the nature of the faculty remain, but changes the principle
in it. The understanding remains understanding, and the will remains
will ; but where there was before folly in the understanding, he puts in a
spii-it of wisdom ; and where there was before a stoutness in the will, he
forms it to a pliableness to his offers. He hath a key to fit every ward in
the lock, and opens the will without injuring the nature of the will.

He doth not change the soul by an alteration of the faculties, but by an
alteration of something in them ; not by an inroad upon them, or by mere
power or a blind instinct, but by proposing to the understanding something
to be known, and informing it of the reasonableness of his precepts, and the
innate goodness and excellency of his oilers, and by inclining the will to
love and embrace what is proposed. And things are proposed under those
notions which usually move our wills and affections. We are moved by
things as they are good, pleasant, profitable ; we entertain things as thej-
make for us ; and detest things as they are contrary to us. Nothing affects
us but under such qualities, and God suits his encouragements to these
natural affections which are in us. His power and wisdom go hand in hand
together ; his power to act what his wisdom orders, and his wisdom to con-
duct what his power executes. He brings men to him in ways suited to
their natural dispositions. The stubborn he tears like a lion, the gentle he
wins like a turtle, by sweetness ; he hath a hammer to break the stout, and
a cord of love to draw the more pliable tempers. He works upon the more
rational in a way of gospel reason, upon the more ingenuous in a way of
kindness, and draws them by the cords of love.

The wise men were led to Christ by a star, and means suited to the know-
ledge and study that those eastern nations used, which was much in astro-
nomy. He worketh upon others by miracles accommodated to every one's
sense, and so proportions the means according to the nature of the subjects
he works upon.

4." The wisdom of God is apparent in his diseipHne and penal evils.
The wisdom of human governments is seen in the matter of their laws, and
in the penalties of their laws, and in the proportion of the punishment to
the offence, and in the good that redounds from the punishment, either to
the offender or to the community.

The wisdom of God is seen in the penalty of death upon the transgression
of his law, both in that it was the gi-eatest evil that man might fear, and so
was a convenient means to keep him in his due bound, and also in the pro-
portion of it to the transgression. Nothing less could be in a wise justice
* Sanderson, part ii. p. 205.

Eoli. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 47

inflicted upon an oflfender for a crime against the highest being and the
supreme excellency. But this hath been spoken of before in the wisdom of
his laws. I shall only mention some few ; it would be too tedious to run
into all.

First, His wisdom appears in judgments, in the suiting them to the quali-
ties of persons and nature of sins. He ' deviseth evil,' Jer. xviii. 11 ; his
judgments are fruits of counsel. ' He also is wise, and will bring evil,' Isa.
xxxi. 2 ; evil suitable to the person oflendiug, and evil suitable to the offence
committed. As the husbandman doth his threshing instruments to the
grain, he hath a rod for the cummin, a tenderer seed, and a flail for the
harder, so hath God greater judgments for the obdurate sinner, and lighter
for those that have something of tenderness in their wickedness : Isa.
xxviii. 27, 29, ' Because he is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in work-
ing ;' so some understand the place : ' With the fro ward he will shew him-
self froward.'

He proportions punishment to the sin, and writes the cause of the judg-
ment in the forehead of the judgment itself. Sodom burned in lust, and
was consumed by fire from heaven. The Jews sold Christ for thirty pence,
and at the taking of Jerusalem, thirty of them were sold for a penny. So
Adonibezek cut off the thumbs and great toes of others, and he is served in
the same kind. Judges i. 7. The Babel builders designed an indissoluble
union, and God brings upon them an unintelligible confusion. And in
Exod. ix. 9, the ashes of the furnace where the Israelites burnt the Egyp-
tian* bricks, sprinkled towards heaven, brought boils upon the Egyptian
bodies, that they might feel in their own what pain they had caused in the
Israelites' flesh, and find, by the smart of the inflamed scab, what they had
made the Israelites endure. The waters of the river Nilus are turned into
blood, wherein they had stifled the breath of the Israelites' infants. And
at last the prince and the flower of their nobility are drowned in the Red
Sea.

It is part of the wisdom of justice to proportion punishment to the crime,
and the degrees of wrath to the degrees of malice in the sin. Afiiictions also
are wisely proportioned. God, as a wise physician, considers the nature of
the humour and strength of the patient, and suits his medicines both to the
one and the other, 1 Cor. x. 13.

Secondly, In the seasons of punishments and afiiictions. He stays till sin be
ripe, that his justice may appear more equitable, and the offender more in-
excusable: Dan. ix. 14, he ' watches upon the evil, to bring it upon men ;'
to bring it in the just season and order for his righteous and gracious pur-
pose ; his righteous purpose on the enemies, and his gracious purpose on his
people.

Jerusalem's calamity came upon them when the city was full of people at
the solemnity of the passover, that he might mow down his enemies at once,
and time their destruction to such a moment wherein they had timed the
crucifixion of his Son. He watched over the clouds of his judgments, and
kept them from pouring down, till his people, the Christians, were provided
for, and had departed out of the city to the chambers and retiring-places
God had provided for them. He made not Jerusalem the shambles for his
enemies till he had made Pella and other places the ark of his friends. As
Pliny tells us, the providence of God holds the seas in a calm for fifteen
days, that the halcyons, little birds that frequent the shore, may build their
nests, and hatch up their young. The judgment upon Sodom was suspended
for some hours till Lot was secured.

God suffered not the church to be invaded by violent persecutions till she

48 chahnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

was established in the faith ;* he would not expose her to so great combats
while she was weak and feeble, hut gave her time to fortify herself, to be
rendered more capable of bearing up under them. He stifled all the motions
of passion the idolaters might have for their superstition till religion was in
such a condition as rather to be increased and purified than extinguished by
opposition. Paul was secured from Nero's chains, and the nets of his
enemies, till he had broke off the chain of the devil from many cities of the
Gentiles, and catched them by the net of the gospel out of the sea of the
world.

Thus the wisdom of God is seen in the seasons of judgments and
afflictions.

Thirdly, It is apparent in the gracious issue of afflictions and penal evils.
It is a part of wisdom to bring good out of the evil of punishment, as well as
to bring good out of sin. The church never was so like to heaven as when it
was most persecuted by hell ; the storms often cleansed it, and the lance
often made it more healthful. Job's integi-ity had not been so clear, nor
his patience so illustrious, had not the devil been permitted to afflict him.
God, by his wisdom, outwits Satan when he by his temptations intends to
pollute us and buffet us, God orders it to purify us ; he often brings the
clearest light out of the thickest darkness, makes poisons to become medi-
cines. Death itself, the greatest punishment in this life, and the entrance
into hell in its own nature, he hath by his wise contrivance made to his
people the gate of heaven and the passage into immortality.f Penal evils
in a nation often end in a public advantage ; troubles and wars among a
people are many times not destroying, but medicinal, and cure them of that
degeneracy, luxury, and effeminateness they contracted by a long peace.

Fourthly, This wisdom is evident in the various ends which God brings
about by afflictions. The attainment of various ends by one and the same
means, is the fruit of the agent's prudence. By the same affliction the wise
God corrects sometimes for some base affection, excites some sleepy grace,
drives out some lurking corruption, refines the soul, and ruins the lust ;
discovers the greatness of a crime, the vanity of the creature, and the
sufficiency in himself.

The Jews bind Paul, and by the judge he is sent to Rome ; while his
mouth is stopped in Judea, it is opened in one of the greatest cities of the
world, and his enemies unwittingly contribute to the increase of the know-
ledge of Christ by those chains in that city that triumphed over the earth,
Acts xxviii. 31. And his afflictive bonds added courage and resolution to
others — Philip, i. 14, 'Many waxing confident by my bonds' — which could
not in their own nature produce such an effect, but by the order and con-
trivance of divine wisdom. In their own nature they would rather make
them disgust the doctrine he suffered for, and cool their zeal in the propa-
gating of it, for fear of the same disgrace and hardship they saw him suffer. J
But the wisdom of God changed the nature of these fetters, and conducted
them to the glory of his name, the encouragement of others, the increase of
the gospel, and the comfort of the apostle himself, Philip, i. 12, 13, 18.
The sufferings of Paul at Rome confirmed the Philippians, a people at a
distance from thence, in the doctrine they had already received at his
hands.

Thus God makes sufferings sometimes which appear like judgments to be
like the viper on Paul's hand. Acts xxviii. 6, a means to clear up innocence,
and procure favour to the doctrine among those barbarians. How often hath

* Daille sur 1 Cor. x. p. 390. t Daille sur Philip. Parta. p. 116, 117.

t Turretine, Serm. p. 53.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 49

he multiplied the church by death and massacres, and increased it by those
means used to annihilate it !

Fifthhj, The divine wisdom is apparent in the deliverances he affords to
other parts of the world as well as to his church. There are delicate com-
posures, curious threads in his webs, and he works them like an artificer.
A goodness wrought for them, curiously wrought, Ps. xxxi. 19.

First, In making the creatures subservient in their natural order to his
gracious ends and purposes. He orders things in such a manner as not to
be necessitated to put forth an extraordinary power in things, which some
part of the creation might accomplish. Miraculous productions would speak
his power ; but the ordering the natural course of things, to occasion such
effects they were never intended for, is one part of the glory of his wisdom.
And that his wisdom may be seen in the course of nature, he conducts the
notions* of creatures, and acts them in their own strength, and doth that
by various windings and turnings of them, which he might do in an instant
by his power in a supernatural way. Indeed, sometimes he hath made
invasions on nature, and suspended the order of their natural law for a
season, to shew himself the absolute Lord and Governor of nature. Yet if
frequent alteratiojis of tlsis nature were made, they would impede the know-
ledge of the nature of things, and be some bar to the discovery and glory of
his wisdom, which is best seen by moving the wheels of inferior creatures
in an exact regularity to his own ends. He might, when his little church
in Jacob's family was like to starve in Canaan, have for their preservation
turned the stones of the country into bread ; but he sends them down to
Egypt to procure corn, that a way may be opened for their removal into
that country ; the truth of his prediction in their captivity accomplished,
and a way made after f the declaration of his great name Jehovah, both in
the fidelity of his word and the greatness of his power in their deliverance
from that furnace of afiiiction. He might have struck Goliah, the captain
of the Philistines' army, with a thunderbolt from heaven when he blas-
phemed his name and scared his people ; but he useth the natural strength
of a stone, and the artificial motion of a sling, by the arm of David, to con-
front the giant, and thereby to free Judea from the ravage of a potent
enemy. He might have delivered the Jews from Babylon by as strange
miracles as he used in their deliverance from Egypt ; he might have plagued
their enemies, gathered his people into a body, and protected them by the
bulwark of a cloud and a pillar of fire against the assaults of their enemies.
But he uses the differences between the Persians and those of Babylon to
accomplish his ends. How sometimes hath the veering about of the wind
on a sudden been the loss of a navy when it hath been upon the point of
victory, and driven back the destruction upon those which intended it for
others ! and the accidental stumbling, or the natural fierceness, of a horse,
flung down a general in the midst of a battle, where he hath lost his life by
the throng, and his death hath brought a defeat to his army, and deliverance
to the other party that were upon the brink of ruin ! Thus doth the wisdom
of God link things together according to natural order, to work out his in-
tended preservation of a people.

Secondly, In the season of deliverance. The timing of affairs is a part of
the wisdom of man, and an eminent part of the wisdom of God. It is in ' due
season' he sends the ' former and the latter rain,' when the earth is in the>
greatest indigence, and when his influences may most contribute to the"
bringing forth and ripening the fruit. The dumb creatures have ' their
meat from him in due season,' Ps. civ. 27. And in his due season have^
* Qu. ' motions ' ?— Ed. t Qu. ' for ' ?— Ed.

VOL. II. D

60 chaknock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

his darling people their deliverance. When Paul was upon his journey to
Damxaseus with a persecuting commission, he is struck down, for the security
of tJae church in that city. The nature of the lion is changed in due season
for the preservation of the lambs from worrying. The Israelites are
miraculously rescued from Egypt, when their wits were at a loss, when their
danger to human understanding was unavoidable ; when earth and sea
refused .protection, then the wisdom and power of heaven stepped in to effect
that which was past the skill of the conductors of that multitude. And
when th« lives of the Jews lay at the stake, and their necks were upon the
block at the mercy of their enemies' swords by an order from Shushan, not
only a reprieve, but a trisimph arrives to the Jews, by the wisdom of God
guiding the affair, whereby, of persons designed to execution, they are made
conquerors, and have opportunity to exercise their revenge instead of their
patience, proving triumphers where they expected to be sufferers, Esther
viii. and ix. How strangely doth God by secret ways bow the hearts of
men, and the nature of things, to the execution of that which he designs,
notwithstanding all the resistance of that which would traverse the security
of his people ! How often doth he trap the wicked in the work of their own
hands, make their confidence to become their ruin, and ensnare them in
those nets they wrought and laid for others ! Ps. ix. 16, ' The wicked is
.snared in the works of his own hands.' ' He scatters the proud in the
iimagination of their hearts,' Luke i. 51, in the height of their hopes, when
their designs have been laid so ,deep in the foundation, and knit, and
•cemented so diose in their superstructure, that no human power or wisdom
.could raze them dow^a. He hath then disappointed their projects, and befooled
their -craft. How often hath he kept back the tire when it hath been ready
to devour, broke the arrows when they have been prepared in the bow,
turned the spear into the bowels of the bearers, and wounded them at the
very instant they were ready to wound others.

Thirdl}', In suiting instruments to his purpose. He either finds them fit, or
makes them on a sudden fit for his gracious .ends. If he hath a tabernacle
to build, he will fit a Bezaleel and Aholiab with the spirit of wisdom and
understanding in all cunning workmanship, Esod. xxxi. 3, 6. If he finds
them crooked pieces, he can, like a wise architect, make them straight beams
for the rearing his house, and for the honoiu* of his name.

He sometimes picks out men according to their natural tempers, and employs
them in his work. Jehu, a man of a furious temper, and ambitious spirit, is
called cut for the destruction of Ahab's house. Moses, a man furnished with all
Egyptian wisdom, fitted by a generous education, prepared also by the
affliction he met with in his flight, and one who had had the benefit of con-
versation with Jethro, a man of more than ordinary wisdom and goodness,
as appears by his prudent and religious counsel, — this man is called out to
be the head and captain of an oppressed people, and to rescue them from
their bondage, and settle the first national chnrch in the world. So Elijah,
a high-spirited man, of a hot and angry temper, one that slighted the frowns
and undervalued the favour of princes, is set up to stem the torrent of the
Israelitish idolatry. So Luther, a man of the same temper, is drawn out by
the same wisdom to encounter the corruptions in the church, against such
opposition, which a milder temper would have sunk under. The earth, in
Rev. xii. 16, is made an instrument to help the woman. When the grandees
of that age transferred the imperial power upon Constantine, who became
afterwards a protecting and nursing father to the church, an end which
many of his favourers never designed, nor ever dreamed of; but God by his
infinite wisdom made these several desio;ns, like several arrows shot at

Rom. XYI. 27. j god's wisdom. 51

rovers, meet in one mark to whicli he directed them, viz., in bringing forth
an instrument to render peace to the world, and security and increase to
his church.

(3.) The wisdom of God doth wonderfully appear in redemption. His
wisdom in creation ravisheth the eye and understanding ; his wisdom in
government doth no less affect a curious observer of the links and concate-
nation of the means, but his wisdom in redemption mounts the mind to a
greater astonishment. The works of creation are the footsteps of his
wisdom ; the work of redemption is the face of his wisdom, A man is
better known by the features of his face than by the prints of his feet. ' We
with open face,' or a revealed face, * beholding the glory of the Lord,' 2 Cor.
iii. 18. Face there refers to God, not to us ; the glory of God's wisdom is
now open, and no longer covered and veiled by the shadows of the law.
As we behold the light glorious, as scattered in the air before the appearance
of the sun, but more gloriously in the face of the sun, when it begins its
race in our horizon, — all the wisdom of God in creation and government, in
his variety of laws, was like the light, the three first days of the creation,
dispersed about the world, but the fourth day it was more glorious, when all
gathered into the body of the sun, Gen. i. 4, 16, — so the light of divine
wisdom and glory was scattered about the world, and so more obscure, till
the fourth divine day of the world, about the four thousandth year, it was
gathered into one body, the Sun of righteousness, and so shone out more
gloriously to men and angels. All things are weaker the thinner they are
extended, but stronger the more they are united and compacted in one body
and appearance. In Christ, in the dispensation by him, as well as in his
person, were hid all the treasm-es of wisdom and knowledge, Col. ii. 3.
Some doles of wisdom were given out in creation, but the treasures of it
opened in redemption, the highest degrees of it that ever God did exert in
the world. Christ is therefore called the wisdom of God, as well as the
power of God, 1 Cor. i. 24, and the gospel is called the 'nisdom of God.
Christ is the wisdom of God principally, and the gospel instrumeutally, as
it is the power of God instrumeutally to subdue the heart to himself. This
is wrapped up in the appointing Christ as redeemer, and opened to us in
the revelation of it by the gospel.

[1.] It is a hidden wisdom. In this regard God is said in the text to
be ' only wise,' and it is said to be a ' hidden wisdom,' 1 Tim. i. 17, and
' wisdom in a mystery,' 1 Cor, ii, 7, incomprehensible to the ordinary capa-
city of an angel, more than the abstruse qualities of the creatures are to the
understanding of man. No wisdom of men or angels is able to search all
the veins of this mine, to tell all the threads of this web, or to understand
the lustre of it ; they are as far from an ability fully to comprehend it as
they were at first to contrive it. That wisdom that invented it can only
comprehend it. In the uncreated understanding only there is a clearness
of light without any shadow of darkness. We come as short of full appre-
hensions of it as a child doth of the counsel of the wisest prince. It
is so bidden from us, that without revelation we could not have the least
imagination of it, and though it be revealed to us, yet without the help of an
infiniteness of understanding we cannot fully fathom it ; it is such a tractate of
divine wisdom, that the angels never before had seen the edition of it till it
was published to the world : Eph. iii, 10, ' To the intent that now, unto
principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be kno^Ti by the church
the manifold wisdom of God,' Noiv made known to them, not before, and
now made known to them ' in heavenly places.' They had not the knowledge
of all heavenly mysteries, though they had the possession of heavenly

52 chaenock's wobks. [Rom. XVI. 27.

glory. They knew the prophecies of it in the word, but attained not a clear
interpretation of those prophecies till the things that were prophesied of
came upon the stage.

[2.] Manifold wisdom ; so it is called. As manifold as mysterious.
Variety in the mystery, and mystery in every part of the variety. It was
not one single act, but a variety of counsels met in it ; a conjunction of ex-
cellent ends and excellent means. The glory of God, the salvation of man,
the defeat of the apostate angels, the discovery of the blessed Trinity in their
nature, operations, their combined and distinct acts and expressions of good-
ness. The means are the conjunction of two natures infinitely distant from
one another ; the union of eternity and time, of mortality and immortality ;
death is made the way to life, and shame the path to glory. The weakness
of the cross is the reparation of man, and the creature is made wise by the
* foolishness of preaching ; ' fallen man grows rich by the poverty of the
Redeemer, and man is filled by the emptiness of God ; the heir of hell made
a son of God, by God's taking upon him the ' form of a servant ; ' the son of
man advanced to the highest degree of honour, by the Son of God becoming
of ' no reputation.'

It is called, Eph. i. 8, ' abundance of wisdom and prudence :' wisdom,
in the eternal counsel, contriving a way; prudence, in the temporary revela-
tion, ordering all affairs and occurrences in the world for the attaining the
end of his counsel. Wisdom refers to the mystery, prudence to the mani-
festation of it in fit ways and convenient seasons ; wisdom, to the contriv-
ance and order ; prudence, to the execution and accomplishment. In all
things God acted as became him, as a wise and just governor of the world,
Heb. ii. 10. Whether the wisdom of God might not have found out some
other way, or whether he were, in regard of the necessity and naturalness of
his justice, limited to this, is not the question ; but that it is the best and
wisest way for the manifestation of his glory, is out of question.

This wisdom will appear in the different interests reconciled by it. In
the subject, the second person in the Trinity, wherein they were reconciled ;
in the two natures wherein he accomplished it, whereby God is made known
to man in his glory, sin eternally condemned, and the repenting and believing
sinner eternally rescued ; the honour and righteousness of the law vindicated
both in the precept and penalty ; the devil's empire overthrown by the same
nature he had overturned, and the subtilty of hell defeated by that nature he
had spoiled ; the creature engaged in the very act to the highest obedience •
and humility, that as God appears as a God upon his throne, the creature
might appear in the lowest posture of a creature, in the depths of resignation
and dependence ; the publication of this made in the gospel, by ways con-
gruous to the wisdom which appeared in the execution of his counsel, and
the conditions of enjoying the fruit of it, most wise and reasonable.

First, The greatest different interests are reconciled, justice in punishing
and mercy in pardoning. For man had broken the law, and plunged him-
self into a gulf of misery. The sword of vengeance was unsheathed by jus-
tice, for the punishment of the criminal ; the bowels of compassion were
stirred by mercy, for the rescue of the miserable. Justice severely beholds
the sin, and mercy compassionately reflects upon the misery. Two different
claims are entered by those concerned attributes ; justice votes for destruc-
tion, and mercy votes for salvation. Justice would draw the sword, and
drench it in the blood of the offender ; mercy would draw the sword, and
turn it from the breast of the sinner. Justice would edge it, and mercy
would blunt it. The arguments are strong on both sides.

First, Justice pleads. I arraign before the tribunal a rebel who was the

KoM. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 58

glorious work of thy hands, the centre of thy rich goodness, and a counter-
part of thy own image. He is indeed miserable, whereby to excite thy com-
passion ; but he is not miserable, without being criminal. Thou didst create
him in a state, and with ability to be otherwise. The riches of thy bounty
aggravate the blackness of his crime. He is a rebel, not by necessity, but
will. "VVTiat constraint was there upon him to hsten to the counsels of the
enemy of God ? WTiat force could there be upon him, since it is without
the compass of any creature to work upon or constrain the will ? Nothing
of ignorance can excuse him ; the law was not ambiguously expressed, but
in plain words ; both as to precept and penalty, it was writ in his nature in
legible characters. Had he received any disgust from thee after his creation,
it would not excuse his apostasy, since, as a sovereign, thou wert not obliged
to thy creature. Thou hadst provided all things richly for him ; he was
crowned with glory and honour. Thy infinite power had bestowed upon him
an habitation richly furnished, and varieties of servants to attend him.
Whatever he viewed without, and whatever he viewed within himself, were
several marks of thy divine bounty, to engage him to obedience. Had there
been some reason of any disgust, it could not have balanced that kindness
which had so much reason to oblige him. However, he had received no
courtesy from the fallen angel, to oblige him to turn into his camp. Was
it not enough that one of thy creatures would have stripped thee of the glory
of heaven, but this also must deprive thee of thy glory upon earth, which
was due from him to thee as his creator ? Can he charge the difficulty of
the command ? No ; it was rather below than above his strength. He
might rather complain that it was no higher, whereby his obedience and
gratitude might have a larger scope, and a more spacious field to move in,
than a precept so light, so easy, as to abstain from one fruit in the garden.
What excuse can he have, that would prefer the liquorishness of his sense
before the dictates of his reason, and the obligations of his creation ? The
law thou didst set him was righteous and reasonable, and shall righteous-
ness and reason be rejected by the supreme and infaUible reason, because
the rebellious creature hath trampled upon it ? What ! must God abrogate
his holy law, because the creature hath slighted it ? What reflection will
this be upon the wisdom that enacted it, and upon the equity of the command
and sanction of it ! Either man must sufier, or the holy law be expunged,
and for ever out of date. And is it not better man should eternally smart
under his crime, than any dishonourable reflections of unrighteousness be
cast upon the law, and of folly and want of foresight upon the lawgiver ?
Not to punish would be to approve the devil's lie, and justify the creature's
revolt ; it would be a condemnation of thy own law as unrighteous, and a
sentencing thy own wisdom as imprudent. Better man should for ever bear
the punishment of his ofience, than God bear the dishonour of his attri-
butes ; better man should be miserable, than God should be unrighteous,
unwise, false, and tamely bear the denial of his sovereignty. But what ad-
vantage would it be to gratify mercy by pardoning the malefactor ? Besides
the irreparable dishonour to the law, the falsifying thy veracity in not exe-
cuting the denounced threatening, he would receive encouragement by such
a grace to spurn more at thy sovereignty, and oppose thy holiness by run-
ning on in a course of sin with hopes of impunity. If the creature be
restored, it cannot be expected that he that hath fared so well, after the
breach of it, should be very careful of a future observance ; his easy re-ad-
mission would abet him in the repetition of his ofi"ence, and thou shalt soon
find him cast ofi" all moral dependence on thee. Shall he be restored with-
out any condition or covenant ? He is a creature not to be governed with-

64 chaenock's woeks. [Rom. XYI. 27.

out a law, and a law is not to be enacted without a penalty. What future
regard will he have to thy precept, or what fear will he have of thy threat-
ening, if his crime be so lightly passed over ? Is it the stability of thy
word ? What reason will he have to give credit to that which he hath found
already disregarded by thyself? Thy truth in future threatenings will be
of no force with him who hath experienced thy laying it aside in the former.
It is necessary therefore that the rebellious creature should be punished, for
the preservation of the honour of the law and the honour of the lawgiver,
with all those perfections that are united in the composure of it.

Secondly, Mercy doth not want a plea. It is true, indeed, i^he sin of man
wants not its aggravations : he hath slighted thy goodness, and accepted thy
enemy as his counsellor ; but it was not a pure act of his own, as the devil's
revolt was. He had a tempter, and the devil had none ; he had, I acknow-
ledge, an understanding to know thy will, and a power to obey it, yet it was
mutable, and had a capacity to fall. It was no difficult task that was set him,
nor a hard yoke that was laid upon [him] ; yet he had a brutish part, as well
as a rational, and sense as well as soul, whereas the fallen angel was a pure
intellectual spirit. Did God create the world to suffer an eternal dishonour,
in letting himself be outwitted by Satan, and his work wrested out of his
hands ? Shall the work of eternal counsel presently sink into irreparable
destruction, and the honour of an Almighty and wise work be lost in the
ruin of the creature ? This would seem contrary to the nature of thy good-
ness, to make man only to render him miserable ; to design him in his crea-
tion for the service of the devil, and not for the service of his Creator. What
else could be the issue, if the chief work of thy hand, defaced presently after
the erecting, should for ever remain in this marred condition ; what can be
expected upon the continuance of his misery, but a perpetual hatred and
enmity of thy creature ? Did God in creation design his being hated, or his
being loved by his creature ? Shall God make a holy law, and have no obe-
dience to that law from that creature whom it was made to govern ? Shall
the curious workmanship of God, and the excellent engravings of the law of
nature in his heart, be so soon defaced, and remain in that blotted condition
for ever ? This fall thou couldst not but in the treasures of thy infinite
knowledge foresee ; why hadst thou goodness then to create him in an in-
tegrity, if thou wouldst not have mercy to pity him in misery ? Shall thy
enemy for ever trample upon the honour of thy work, and triumph over the
glory of God, and applaud himself in the success of his subtilty ? Shall
thy creature only passively glorify thee as an avenger, and not actively as a
compassionater ? Am not I a perfection of thy nature as well as justice ?
Shall justice engross all, and I never come into view ? It is resolved
already, that the fallen angels shall be no subjects for me to exercise myself
upon, and I have now less reason than before to plead for them. They fell
with a full consent of will, without any motion from another ; and, not content
with their own apostasy, they envy thee, and thy glory upon earth, as well
as in heaven, and have drawn into their party the best part of the creation
below. Shall Satan plunge the whole creation in the same irreparable ruin
with himself? If the creature be restored, will he contract a boldness in
sin by impunity ? Hast thou not a grace to render him ingenuous in obe-
dience, as well as a compassion to recover him from misery ? What will
hinder, but that such a grace, which hath established the standing angels,
may establish this recovered creature ? If I am utterly excluded from exer-
cising myself on men, as I have been from devils, a whole species is lost ;
nay, I can never expect to appear upon the stage. If thou wilt quite ruin
him by justice, and create another world, and another man, if he stand, thy

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. SS

bounty will be eminent ; yet there is no room for mercy to act upon unless,
by the commission of sin, he exposeth himself to misery ; and if sin enter
into another world, I have little hopes to be heard then if I am rejected now.
Worlds will be perpetually created by goodness, wisdom, and power ; sin
entering into these worlds, will be perpetually punished by justice ; and
mercy, which is a perfection of thy nature, will for ever be commanded
silence, and lie wrapt up in an eternal darkness. Take occasion now, there-
fore, to expose me to the knowledge of thy creature, since, without misery,
mercy can never set foot into the world.

Mercy pleads, if man be ruined, the creation is in vain ; justice pleads, if
man be not sentenced, the law is in vain ; truth backs justice, and grace
abets mercy. What shall be done in this seeming contradiction ? Mercy
is not manifested, if man be not pardoned ; justice will complain, if man be
not punished.

Thirdly, An expedient is found out by the wisdom of God to answer these
demands, and adjust the differences between them. The wisdom of God
answers, I will satisfy your pleas. The pleas of justice shall be satisfied
in punishing, and the pleas of mercy shall be received in pardoning.
Justice shall not complain for want of punishment, nor mercy for want of
compassion. I will have an infinite sacrifice to content justice, and the
virtue and fruit of that sacrifice shall delight mercy. Here shall justice have
punishment to accept, and mercy shall have pardon to bestow. The rights
of Iboth are preserved, and the demands of both amicably accorded in punish-
ment and pardon, by transferring the punishment of our crimes upon a
surety, exacting a recompence from his blood by justice, and conferring life
and salvation upon us by mercy, without the expense of one drop of our
own. Thus is justice satisfied in its severities, and mercy in its indulgences.
The riches of grace are twisted with the terrors of wrath. The bowels of
mercy are wound about the flaming sword of justice, and the sword of justice
protects and secures the bowels of mercy. Thus is God righteous without
being cruel, and merciful without being unjust ; his righteousness inviolable,
and the world recoverable. Thus is a resplendent mercy brought forth in
the midst of all the curses, confusions, and wrath threatened to the offender.

Thus is the admirable temperament found out by the wisdom of God, his
justice is honoured in the sufferings of man's surety, and his mercy is
honoured in the application of the propitiation to the offender. Eom.
iii. 24, 25, * Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that
is in Jesus Christ ; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that
are past, through the forbearance of God.' Had we in our persons been
sacrifices to justice, mercy had for ever been unknown ; had we been solely
fostered by mercy, justice had for ever been secluded ; had we, being guilty,
been absolved, mercy might have rejoiced, and justice might have com-
plained ; had we been solely punished, justice would have triumphed, and
mercy grieved. But by this medium of redemption, neither hath ground of
complaint. Justice hath nothing to charge when the punishment is inflicted,
mercy hath whereof to boast when the surety is accepted. The debt of the
sinner is transferred upon the surety, that the merit of the surety may be
conferred upon the sinner ; so that God now deals with our sins in a way
of consuming justice, and with our persons in a way of relieving mercy. It
is highly better and more glorious than if the claim of one had been granted,
with the exclusion of the demand of the other. It had then been either an
unrighteous mercy or a merciless justice, it is now a righteous mercy and a
merciful justice.

^ chaknock's wobks. [Rom. XVI. 27.

Secondly, The wisdom of God appears in the subject or person wherein
these were accorded, the second person in the blessed Trinity. There was a
congruity in the Son's undertaking and effecting it rather than any other
person, according to the order of the persons, and the several functions of
the persons, as represented in Scripture. The Father, after creation, is the
lawgiver, and presents man with the image of his own holiness, and the way
to his creatures' happiness ; but after the fall, man was too impotent to
perform the law, and too polluted to enjoy a felicity. Redemption was then
necessary ; not that it was necessai-y for God to redeem man, but it was
necessary for man's happiness that he should be recovered. To this the
second person is appointed, that by communion with him, man might derive
a happiness, and be brought again to God. But since man was blind in his
understanding, and an enemy in his will to God, there must be the exert-
ing of a virtue to enhghten his mind, and bend his will to understand, and
accept of this redemption. And this work is assigned to the third person,
the Holy Ghost.

First, It was not congi'uous that the Father should assume human nature,
and suffer in it for the redemption of man. He was first in order; he was
the lawgiver, and therefore to be the judge. As lawgiver, it was not con-
venient he should stand in stead of the law-breaker ; and as a judge, it was
as little convenient he should be reputed a malefactor. That he who had
made a law against sin, denounced a penalty upon the commission of sin,
and whose part it was actually to punish the sinner, should become sin for
the wilful transgressor of this law, he being the rector, how could he be
an advocate and intercessor to himself? How could he be the judge and
the sacrifice? A judge, and yet a mediator to himself? If he had been the
sacrifice, there must be some person to examine the validity of it, and pro-
nounce the sentence of acceptance. Was it agreeable that the Son should
sit upon a throne of judgment, and the Father stand at the bar and be
responsible to the Son ; that the Son should be in the place of a governor,
and the Father in the place of the criminal; that the Father should be
bruised by the Son, as the Son was by the Father, Isa. liii. 10; that the
Son should awaken a sword against the Father, as the Father did against
the Son, Zech. xiii. 7 ; that the Father should be sent by the Son, as the
Son was by the Father? Mai. ii. 1. The order of the persons in the blessed
Trinity had been inverted and disturbed. Had the Father been sent, he had
not been first in order ; the sender is before the person sent. As the
Father begets, and the Son is begotten, John i. 14, so the Father sends, and
the Son is sent. He whose order is to send cannot properly send himself.

Secondly, Nor was it congruous that the Spirit should be sent upon this
affair. If the Holy Ghost had been sent to redeem us, and the Son to apply
that redemption to us, the order of the persons had also been inverted : the
Spirit then, who was third in order, had been second in operation. The
Son would then have received of the Spirit, as the Spirit doth now of Christ,
and shews unto us, John xvi. 14. As the Spirit proceeded from the Father
and the Son, so the proper function and operation of it was in order after
the operations of the Father and the Son. Had the Spirit been sent to
redeem us, and the Son sent by the Father and the Spirit to apply that
redemption to us, the Son in his acts had proceeded from [the Father and
the Spirit ; the Spirit, as sender, had been in order before the Son : whereas
the Spirit is called * the Spirit of Christ,' as sent by Christ from the Father,
Gal. iv. 6, John xv. 26 ; but as the order of the works, so the order of the
persons is preserved in their several operations. Creation, and a law to
govern the creature, precedes redemption. Nothing, or that which hath no

EoM. XYI. 27.J god's wisdom. 57

being, is not capable of a redeemed being. Redemption supposeth the
existence and the misery of a person redeemed. As creation precedes
redemption, so redemption precedes the application of it. As redemption
supposeth the being of the creature, so application of redemption supposeth
the efficacy of redemption. According to the order of these works is the
order of the operations of the three persons. Creation belongs to the Father,
the first person; redemption, the second work, is the function of the Son,
the second person ; application, the third work, is the office of the Holy
Ghost, the third person.* The Father orders it, the Son acts it, the Holy
Ghost applies it. He purifies our souls to understand, believe, and love
these mysteries. He forms Christ in the womb of the soul, as he did the
body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin. As the Spirit of God moved
upon the waters, to garnish and adorn the world, after the matter of it was
formed. Gen. i. 2, so he moves upon the heart, to supple it to a compliance
with Christ, and draws the lineaments of the new creation in the soul, after
the foundation is laid.

The Son pays the price that was due from us to God, and the Spirit is
the earnest of the promises of life and glory purchased by the merit of that
death. It is to be observed that the Father, under the dispensation of the
law, proposed the commands, with the promises and threatenings, to the
understandings of men ; and Christ, under the dispensation of grace, when
he was upon the earth, proposeth the gospel as the means of salvation,
exhorts to faith as the condition of salvation ; but it was neither the function
of the one or the other to display such an efficacy in the understanding and
will, to make men beheve and obey, and therefore there were such few con-
versions in the time of Christ by his miracles. But this work was reserved
for the fuller and brighter appearance of the Spirit, whose office it was to
convince the world of the necessity of a Redeemer, because of their lost
condition ; of the person of the Redeemer, the Son of God ; of the sufiiciency
and efficacy of redemption, because of his righteousness and acceptation by
the Father. The wisdom of God is seen in preparing and presenting the
objects, and then in making impression of them upon the subjects he intends.
And thus is the order of the three persons preserved.

Thirdly, The second person had the greatest congruity to this work. He
by whom God created the world was most conveniently employed in restoring
the defaced world : who more fit to recover it from its lapsed state than he
that had erected it in its primitive state ? Heb. i. 2. He was the light of
men in creation, John i. 4, and therefore it was most reasonable he should be
the light of men in redemption. Who fitter to reform the divine image than
he that first formed it ? Who fitter to speak for us to God, than he who was
the Word ? John i. 1. W^ho could better intercede with the Father than he
who was the only begotten and beloved Son ? Who so fit to redeem the
forfeited inheritance as the heir of all things ? Who fitter and better to
prevail for us to have the right of children than he that possessed it by
nature ? We fell from being the sons of God, and who fitter to introduce us
into an adopted state, than the Son of God ? Herein was an expression of
the richer grace, because the first sin was immediately against the wisdom
of God, by an ambitious aflectation of a wisdom equal to God, that that
person, who was the wisdom of God, should be made a sacrifice for the ex-
piation of the sin against wisdom.

Thirdly, The wisdom of God is seen in the two natures of Christ, whereby
this redemption was accomplished. The union of the two natures was the
foundation of the union of God and the fallen creature.
* Amyraut, Moral, torn. v. p. 478-480.

58 CnATvNOCK's WORKS. [RoM. XVI. 27.

First, The union itself is admirable : the word is made iBesh, John i. 14.
One equal with God, in the form of a servant, Phil. ii. 7. When the apostle
speaks of ' God manifested in the flesh,' he speaks ' the wisdom of God in a
mystery,' 1 Tim. iii. 16. That which is incomprehensible to the angels,
■which they never imagined before it was revealed, which perhaps they never
knew till they beheld it. I am sure, under the law the figures of the che-
rubims were placed in the sanctuary with their faces looking towards the
propitiatory, in a perj^etual posture of contemplation and admiration, Exod.
xxxvii. 9, to which the apostle alludes, 1 Pet. i. 12.

Mysterious is the wisdom of God to unite finite and infinite, almightiness
and weakness, immortality and mortality, immutability with a thing subject
to change ; to have a nature from eternity, and yet a nature subject to the
revolutions of time ; a nature to make a law, and a nature to be subjected to
the law ; to be God blessed for ever in the bosom of his Father, afad an
infant exposed to calamities from the womb of his mother : terms seeming
most distant from union, most incapable of conjunction, to shake hands
together, to be most intimately conjoined ; gloiy and vileness, fulness and
emptiness, heaven and earth ; the creature with the Creator ; he that made
all things, in one person with a nature that is made ; Immanuel, God and
man in one ; that which is most spiritual to partake of that which is carnal
flesh and blood, Heb. ii. 14 ; one with the Father in his Godhead, one with
ns in his manhood ; the Godhead to be in him in the fullest perfection, and
the manhood in the gi-eatest purity ; the creature one with the Creator, and
the Creator one with the creature. Thus is the incomprehensible wisdom of
God declared in the Word being made flesh.

Secondly, In the manner of this union. A union of two natures, yet no
natural union. It transcends all the unions visible among creatures ;* it is
not like the union of stones in a building, or of two pieces of timber fastened
together, which touch one another only in their superficies and outside,
without any intimacy with one another. By such a kind of union, God would
not be man : the Word could not so be made flesh ; nor is it union of parts
to the whole, as the members and the body ; the members are parts, the
body is the whole ; for the whole results from the parts, and depends upon
the parts ; but Christ being God, is independent upon anything. The parts
are in order of nature before the whole, but nothing can be in order of nature
before God. Nor is it as the union of two liquors, as when wine and water
are mixed together, for they are so incorporated, as not to be distinguished
from one another ; no man can tell which particle is wine, and which is water.
But the properties of the divine nature are distinguishable from the properties
of the human. Nor is it as the union of the soul and body, so as that the Deity
is the form of the humanity, as the soul is the form of the body ; for as
the soul is but a part of the man, so the divinity would be then but a part
of the humanity ; and as a form, or the soul, is in a state of imperfection
without that which it is to inform ; so the divinity of Christ would have been
imperfect till it had assumed the humanity ; and so the perfection of an
eternal Deity would have depended on a creature of time.

This union of two natures in Christ is incomprehensible ; and it is a mys'
tery we cannot arrive to the top of, how the divine nature, which is the same
with that of the Father and the Holy Ghost, should be united to the human
nature, without its being said that the Father and the Holy Ghost were
united to the flesh ; but the Scripture doth not encourage any such notion :
it speaks only of the Word, the person of the Word being made flesh ; and
in his being made flesh, distinguisheth him from the Father, as * the only
* Savana, Triump. Crucis, lib, iii. cap. vii. p. 211.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 59

begotten of the Father,' John i. 14. The person of the Son was the term
of this union.

1st, This union doth not confound the properties of the Deity, and those
of the humanity. They remain distinct and entire in each other. The
Deity is not changed into flesh, nor the flesh transformed into God. They
are distinct and yet united ; they are conjoined, and yet unmixed ; the dues
of either nature are preserved. It is impossible that the majesty of the
divinity can receive an alteration. It is as impossible that the meanness of
the humanity can receive the impressions of the Deity, so as to be changed
into it ; and a creature be metamorphosed into the Creator, and temporary
flesh become eternal, and finite mount up into infinity. As the soul and
body are united, and make one person, yet the soul is not changed into the
perfections of the body, nor the body into the perfections of the soul. There
is a change made in the humanity by being advanced to a more excellent
union, but not in the Deity ; as a change is made in the air, when it is
enhghtened by the sun, not in the sun, which communicates that brightness
to the air. Athanasias makes the burning bush to be a type of Chi-ist's
incarnation, Exod. iii. 2, the fire signifying the divine nature, and the
bush the human. The bush is a branch springing up from the earth, and
the fire descends from heaven ; as the bush was united to the fire, yet was
not hurt by the flame, nor converted into fire, there remained a dili'erence
between the bush and the fire, yet the properties of the fire shined in the
bush, so that the whole bush seemed to be on fire. So in the incarnation
of Christ, the human nature is not swallowed up by the divine, nor changed
into it, nor confounded with it ; but so united, that the properties of both
remain firm, two are so become one that they remain two still. One person
in two natures, containing the glorious perfections of the divine, and the
weaknesses of the human. The fulness of the Deity dwells bodily in Christ,
Col. ii. 9.

2dbj, The divine nature is united to every part of the humanity, the
whole divinity to the whole humanity ; so that no part but may be said
to be the member of God, as well as the blood is said to be the blood of
God, Acts XX. 28. By the same reason it may be said, the hand of God,
the eye of God, the arm of God. As God is infinitely present everywhere,
so as to be excluded from no place, so is the Deity hypostatically every-
where in the humanity, not excluded from; any part of it, as the light of the
sun in every part of the air, as a sparkling splendour in every part of the
diamond. Therefore it is concluded by all that acknowledge the deity of
Christ, that when his soul was separated from the body, the deity, re-
mained united both to soul and body, as light doth in every part of a broken
crystal.

3dl,j, Therefore perpetually united : Col. ii. 9, The * fulness of the
Godhead dwells in him bodily.' It dwells in him, not lodges in him as a
traveller in an inn, it resides in him as a fixed habitation. As God describes
the perpetuity of his presence in the ark by his habitation or dwelling in it,
Exod. xxix. 45, so doth the apostle the inseparable duration of the Deity in
the humanity, and the indissoluble union of the humanity with the Deity.
It was united on earth, it remains united in heaven. It was not an image or
an apparition, as the tongues wherein the Spirit came upon the apostle were a
temporary representation, not a thing united perpetually to the person of
the Holy Ghost.

Atltbj, It was a personal union. It was not an union of persons, though
it was a personal union. So Davenant expounds, Col. ii. 9, Christ did
not take the person of man, but the nature of man, into subsistence with

60 chabnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

himself. The body and soul of Christ were not united in themselves, had
no subsistence in themselves, till they were united to the person of the Son
of God. If the person of a man were united to him, the human nature would
have been the nature of the person so united to him, and not the nature of
the Son of God : Heb. ii. 14, 16, ' Forasmuch then as the children are par-
takers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same,
that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is,
the devil. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on
him the seed of Abraham.' He took flesh and blood to be his own nature,
perpetually to subsist in the person of the Aoyog, which must be by a per-
sonal union, or no way ; the deity united to the humanity, and both
natures to be one person. This is the mysterious and manifold wisdom of
God.

Thirdly, The end of this union.

1st, He was hereby fitted to be mediator. He hath something like to
man, and something like to God. If he were in all things only Hke to man,
he would be at a distance from God. If he were in all things only like to
God, he would be at a distance from man. He is a true mediator between
mortal sinners and the immortal righteous one. He was near to us by the
infirmities of our nature, and near to God by the perfections of the divine ;
as near to God in his nature, as to us in ours ; as near to us in our nature
as he is to God in the divine. Nothing that belongs to the Deity, but he
possesses ; nothing that belongs to the human nature, but he is clothed with.

He had both the nature which had offended, and that nature which was
oS'ended ; a nature to please God, and] a nature to pleasure us ; a nature
whereby he experimentally knew the excellency of God, which was injured,
and understood the glory due to him, and consequently the greatness of the
offence, which was to be measured by the dignity of his person, and a
nature whereby he might be sensible of the miseries contracted by, and
endure the calamities due to, the offender, that he might both have compas-
sion on him, and make due satisfaction for him. He had two distinct
natures, capable of the affections and sentiments of the two persons he was
to accord ; he was a just judge of the rights of the one, and the demerit of
the other.* He could not have this full and perfect understanding, if he
did not possess the perfections of the one, and the qualities of the other.
The one fitted him for ' things appertaining to God,' Heb. v. 1, and the
other furnished him with a sense of the ' infirmities of man,' Heb. iv. 15.

'2>dlrj, He was hereby fitted for the working out the happiness of man.
A divine nature to communicate to man, and a human nature to carry up
to God.

1st, He had a nature whereby to suffer for us, and a nature whereby to
be meritorious in those sufferings ; a nature to make him capable to bear
the penalty, and a nature to make his suff'erings sufficient for all that em-
braced him ; a nature capable to be exposed to the flames of divine wrath,
and another nature uncapable to be crushed by the weight, or consumed
by the heat of it : a human nature to suffer, and stand a sacrifice in the
stead of man ; a divine nature to sanctify these sufferings, and fill the nostrils
of God with a sweet savour, and thereby atone his wrath ; the one to bear
the stroke due to us, and the other to add merit to his sufferings for us.
Had he not been man, he could not have filled our place in suffering ; and
could he otherwise have suffered, his sufferings had not been applicable to
us ; and had he not been God, his sufferings had not been meritoriously and
fruitfully applicable. Had not his blood been the blood of God, it had been
* Gomb. de relig. p. 42.

Rom. XYL. 27.] god's wisdom. 61

of as little advantage as the blood of an ordinary man, or the blood of the
legal sacrifices, Heb. ix. 12. Nothing less than God could have satisfied
God for the injury done by man. Nothing less than God could have counter-
vailed the torments due to the ofiending creature. Nothing less than God
could have rescued us out of the hands of the jailor, too powerful for us.

2dly, He had therefore a nature to be compassionate to us, and victorious
for us ; a nature sensibly to compassionate us, and another nature to
render those compassions efiectual for our relief; he had the compassions
of our nature to pity us, and the patience of the divine nature to bear with
us. He hath the afiections of a man to us, and the power of a God for us ;
a nature to discern the devil for us, and another nature to be sensible of
the working of the devil in us, and against us. If he had been only God,
he would not have had an experimental sense of our misery ; and if he had
been only man, he could not have vanquished our enemies. Had he been
only God, he could not have died ; and had he been only man, he could not
have conquered death.

3dly, A nature efficaciously to instruct us. As man, he was to instruct
us sensibly ; as God, he was to instruct us infalHbly. A nature whereby
he might converse with us, and a nature whereby he might influence us in
those converses. A human mouth to minister instructions to man, and a
divine power to imprint it with efficacy.

4thly, A nature to be a pattern to us. A pattern of gi-ace as man, as
Adam was to have been to his posterity. A divine nature shining in the
human, the image of the invisible God in the glass of our flesh, that he
might be a perfect copy for our imitation: Col. i. 15, 'The image of the
invisible God, and the fijrst-born of every creature' in conjunction.* The
virtues of the Deity are sweetened and tempered by the union with the
humanity, as the beams of the sun are by shining through a coloured glass,
which condescends more to the weakness of our eye.

Thus the perfections of the invisible God, breaking through the first-bom
of every creature, glittering in Christ's created state, became more sensible
for contemplation b}' our mind, and more imitable for conformity in our
practice.

5thly, A nature to be a ground of confidence in our approach to God. A
nature wherein we may behold him, and wherein we may approach to him ;
a nature for our comfort, and a nature for our confidence. Had he been
only man, he had been too feeble to assure us; and had he been only God,
he had been too high to attract us ; but now we are allured by his human
nature, and assured by his divine, in our drawing near to heaven. Com-
munion with God was desired by us, but our guilt stifled our hopes, and
the infinite excellency of the divine nature would have damped our hopes of
speeding ; but since these two natures, so far distant, are met in a marriage-
knot, we have a ground of hope, nay, an earnest that the Creator and believ-
ing creature shall meet and converse together.

And since our sins are expiated by the death of the human nature in
conjunction with the divine, our guilt, upon believing, shall not hinder us
from this comfortable approach. Had he been only man, he could not have
assured us an approach to God ; had he been only God, his justice would
not have admitted us to approach to him ; he had been too terrible for guilty
persons, and too holy for polluted persons to come near to him ; but by being
made man, his justice is tempered ; and by his being God and man, his mercy
is insured. A human nature he had, one with us, that we might be related
to God as one with him.

♦ Amyraut, Moral, torn. v. P' 468, 469.

62 chaknock's wobks. [Rom. XVI. 27.

GtMy, A nature to derive all good to us. Had he not been man, we had
had no share or part in him ; a satisfaction by him had not been imputed to
us. If he were not God, he could not communicate to us divine graces and
eternal happiness, he could not have had power to convey so great a good
to us had he been only man ; and he could not have done it, according to
the rule of inflexible righteousness, had he been only God. As man, he is
the way of conveyance; as God, he is the spring of conveyance. From
this grace of union, and the grace of unction, we find rivers of waters flow-
ing to ' make glad the city of God.' Believers are his branches, and draw
sap from him as he is their root in his human nature, and have an endless
duration of it from his divine. Had he not been man, he had not been in
a state to obey the law ; had he not been God as well as man, his obedience
could not have been valuable to be imputed to us.

How should this mystery be studied by us, which would afford us both
admiration and content ! admiration in the incompi-ehensibleness of it, con-
tentment in the fitness of the mediator. By this wisdom of God we receive
the props of our faith, and the fruits of joy and peace. Wisdom consists
in choosing fit means, and conducting them in such a method as may reach
with good success the variety of marks which are aimed at. Thus hath the
wisdom of God set forth a mediator suited to our wants, fitted for our
supplies, and ordered so the whole affair by the union of these two natures
in the person of the Redeemer, that there could be no disappointment by
all the bustle hell and hellish instruments could raise against it.

Fourthhj, The wisdom of God is seen in this way of redemption, in vindi-
cating the honour and righteousness of the law, both as to precept and penalty.
The fii'st and irreversible design of the law was obedience ; the penalty of
the law had only entrance upon transgression ; obedience was the design,
and the penalty was added to enforce the observation of the precept : Gen.
ii. 17, ' Thou shalt not eat,' there is the precept; 'In the day thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt die,' there is the penalty. Obedience was our debt to
the law as creatures, punishment was due from the law to us as sinners.
"We were bound to endure the penalty for our first transgression, but the
penalty did not cancel the bond of future obedience. The penalty had not
been incurred without transgressing the precept, yet the precept was not
abrogated by enduring the penalty. Since man so soon revolted, and by
his revolt fell under the threatening, the justice of the law had been
honoured by man's sufferings, but the holiness and equity of the law had
been honoured by man's obedience. The wisdom of God finds out a
medium to satisfy both : the justice of the law is preserved in the execution
of the penalty, and the holiness of the law is honoured in the observance of
the precept.

The life of our Saviour is a conformity to the precept, and his death is a
conformity to the penalty ; . the precepts are exactly performed, and the curse
punctually executed, by a voluntary observing the one, and a voluntary under-
going the other. It is obeyed as if it had not been transgressed, and executed
as if it had not been obeyed.

It became the wisdom, justice, and holiness of God, as the rector of the
world, to exact it, Heb. ii. 10; and it became the holiness of the mediator
to fulfil all the righteousness of the law, Rom. viii. 3, Mat. iii. 15. And
thus the honour of the law was vindicated in all the parts of it. The trans-
gression of the law was condemned in the flesh of the Redeemer, and the
righteousness of the law was fulfilled in his person ; and both these acts of
obedience, being counted as one righteousness, and imputed to the believing
sinner, rendered him a subject to the law, both in its preceptive and mina-

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 63

tory part. By Adam's sinful acting we were made sinners, and by Christ's
righteous acting we are made righteous : Rom. v. 19, ' As by one man's dis-
obedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous.' The law was obeyed by him, that ' the righteousness
of it might be fulfilled in us,' Rom. viii. 4. It is not fulfilled in us, or in
our actions, by inherency, but fulfilled in us by imputation of that righteous-
ness which was exactly fulfilled by another. As he died for us, and rose
again for us, so he lived for us. The commands of the law were as well
observed for us, as the threatenings of the law were endured for us. This
justification of a sinner, with the preservation of the holiness of the law in
truth, in the inward parts, in sincerity of intention as well as the conformity
in action, is the wisdom of God, the gospel wisdom which David desires to
know : Ps. li. 6, ' Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the
hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom ;' or, as some render it,
' the hidden things of wisdom.' Not an inherent wisdom in the acknow-
ledgments of his sin, which he had confessed before, but the wisdom of God
in providing a medicine, so as to keep up the holiness of the law in the
observance of it in truth, and the averting the judgment due to the sinner.
In and by this way, methodised by the wisdom of God, all doubts and
troubles are discharged. Naturally, if we take a view of the law to behold
its holiness and justice, and then of our hearts, to see the contrariety in
them to the command, and the pollution repugnant to its holiness, and after
this cast our eyes upward and behold a flaming sword edged with curses and
wrath, is there any matter but that of terror afforded by any of these ? But
when we behold in the life of Christ a conformity to the mandatory part of
the law, and in the cross of Chi-ist a sustaining the minatory part of the law,
this wisdom of God gives a well-grounded and rational dismiss to all the
horrors that can seize upon us.

Fifthly, The wisdom of God in redemption is visible in manifesting two
contrary afiections at the same time, and in one act : the greatest hatred of sin,
and the greatest love to the sinner. In this way he punishes the sin without
ruining the sinner, and repairs the ruins of the sinner without indulging the
sin. Here is eternal love and eternal hatred ; a condemning the sin to what
it merited, and an advancing the sinner to what he could not expect.
Herein is the choicest love and the deepest hatred manifest ; an implacable-
ness against the sin, and a placableness to the sinner. His hatred of sin
hath been discovered in other ways : in punishing the devil without remedy ;
sentencing man to an expulsion from paradise, though seduced by another ;
in accursing the serpent, an irrational creature, though but a misguided
instniment. The whole tenor of his threatenings declare his loathing of
sin, and the sprinkhngs of his judgments in the world, and the horrible
expectations of terrified consciences, confirm it. But what are all these
testimonies to the highest evidence that can possibly be given, in the sheath-
ing the sword of his wrath in the heart of his Son ! If a father should
order his son to take a mean garb below his dignity, order him to be dragged
to prison, seem to throw ofi' all affection of a father for the severity of a
judge, condemn his son to a horrible death, be a spectator of his bleeding
condition, wilhhold his hand from assuaging his misery, regard it rather
with joy than sorrow, give him a bitter cup to drink, and stand by to see
him drink it off to the bottom, dregs and all, and flash frowns in his face all
the while, and this not for any fault of his own, but the rebellion of some
subjects he undertook for, and that the offenders might have a pardon sealed
by the blood of the son, the sufferer, all this would evidence his detestation
of the rebellion, and his affection to the rebels ; his hatred to their crime,

64 charnock's works. [Rom. X"\T[. 27.

and his love to their welfare. This did God do : he delivered Christ up for
our offences, Rom. viii. 32 ; the Father gave him the cup, John xviii. 18;
the Lord bruised him with pleasure, Isa. liii. 10, and that for sin. He
transferred upon the shoulders of his Son the pain we had merited, that the
criminal might be restored to the place he had forfeited. He hates the sin
so as to condemn it for ever, and wrap it up in the curse he had threatened,
and loves the sinner believing and repenting, so as to mount him to an
expectation of a happiness exceeding the first state both in glory and per-
petuity. Instead of an earthly paradise, lays the foundation of an heavenly
mansion, brings forth a weight of glory from a weight of misery, separates
the comfortable light of the sun from the scorching heat we had deserved
at his hands. Thus hath God's hatred of sin been manifested. He is at an
eternal defiance with sin, yet nearer in alliance with the sinner than he was
before the revolt ; as if man's miserable fall had endeared him to the Judge.
This is the wisdom and prudence of grace wherein God hath abounded,
Eph. i. 8 ; a wisdom in twisting the happy restoration of the broken amity
with an everlasting curse upon that which made the breach, both upon sin
the cause, and upon Satan the seducer to it. Thus is hatred and love in
their highest glory manifested together : hatred to sin, in the death of
Christ, more than if the torments of hell had been undergone by the sinner ;
and love to the sinner, more than if he had, by an absolute and simple
bounty, bestowed upon him the possession of heaven ; because the gift of
his Son for such an end is a greater token of his boundless affections than a
reinstating man in paradise. Thus is the wisdom of God seen in redemp-
tion ; consuming the sin, and recovering the sinner.

Sixthly, The wisdom of God is evident in overturning the devil's empire
by the nature he had vanquished, and by ways quite contrary to what that
malicious spirit could imagine. The devil, indeed, read his own doom in
the first promise, and found his ruin resolved upon by the means of the seed
of the woman, but by what seed was not so easily known to him ;* and the
methods whereby it was to be brought about was a mystery kept secret
from the malicious devils, since it was not discovered to the obedient angels.
He might know from Isaiah liii. that the Redeemer was assured to divide
the spoil with the strong, rescue a part of the lost creation out of his hands ;
and that this was to be effected by making his soul an ofiering for sin. But
could he imagine which way his soul was to be made such an offering ? He
shrewdly suspected Christ, just after his inauguration into his office by bap-
tism, to be the Son of God ; but did he ever dream that the Messiah, by
dying as a reputed malefactor, should be a sacrifice for the expiation of the
sin the devil had introduced by his subtilty ? Did he ever imagine a cross
should dispossess him of his crown, and that dying groans should wrest the
victory out of his hands ?

He was conquered by that nature he had cast headlong into ruin. A
woman, by his subtilty, was the occasion of our death ; and woman, by the
conduct of the only wise God, brings forth the author of our life and the
conqueror of our enemies. The flesh of the old Adam had infected us, and
the flesh of the new Adam cures us : 1 Cor. xv. 21, 'By man came death ;
by man also came the resurrection from the dead.' We are killed by the
old Adam, and raised by the new ; as among the Israelites, a fiery serpent
gave the wound, and a brazen serpent administers the cure. The nature
that was deceived bruiseth the deceiver, and razeth up the foundations of

* And indeed the heathen oracles, managed by the devils, declared that they were
not long to hold their sceptre in the world, but the Hebrew child should vanquish
them.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 65

his kingdom. Satan is defeated by the counsels he took to secure his pos-
session, and loses the victory by the same means whereby he thought to
preserve it.

His tempting the Jews to the sin of crucifying the Son of God, had a
contrary success to his tempting Adam to eat of the tree. The first death
he brought upon Adam ruined us, and the death he brought by his instru-
ments upon the second Adam restored us. Ey a tree, if one may so say,
he had triumphed over the world, and by the fruit of a tree, one hanging
upon a tree, he is discharged of his power over us : Heb. ii. 14, ' Through
death he destroyed him that had the power of death.' And thus the devil
ruins his own kingdom while he thinks to confirm and enlarge it, and is
defeated by his own policy, whereby he thought to continue the world under
his chains, and deprive the Creator of the world of his purposed honour.
What deeper counsel could he resolve upon for his own security, than to be
instrumental in the death of him who was God, the terror of the devil him-
self, and to bring the Redeemer of the world to expire with disgrace in the
sight of a multitude of men ! Thus did the wisdom of God shine forth in
restoring us by methods seemingly repugnant to the end he aimed at, and
above the suspicion of a subtle devil, whom he intended to baffle.

Could he imagine that we should be healed by stripes, quickened by death,
purified by blood, crowned by a cross, advanced to the highest honour by
the lowest humility, comforted by sorrows, glorified by disgrace, absolved by
condemnation, and made rich by poverty ? That the sweetest honey should
at once spring out of the belly of a dead lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah,
and out of the bosom of the living God ? How wonderful is this wisdom of
God ! That the seed of the woman, bom of a mean virgin, brought forth
in a stable, spending his days in affliction, misery, and poverty, without any
pomp and splendour, passing some time in a carpenter's shop, Mark vi. 6,
with carpenter's tools, and afterwards exposed to a horrible and disgraceful
death, should by this way pull down the gates of hell, subvert the kingdom
of the devil, and be the hammer to break in pieces that power which he had
so long exercised over the world ! Thus became he the author of our life,
by being bound for a while in the chains of death, and arrived to a princi-
pality over the most malicious powers by being a prisoner for us, and the
anvil of their rage and fury.

Seventhly, The wisdom of God appears in giving us this way the surest
ground of comfort, and the strongest incentive to obedience. The rebel is
reconciled, and the rebellion shamed ; God is propitiated and the sinner sancti-
fied, by the same blood. What can more contribute to our comfort and con-
fidence than God's richest gift to us ? WTiat can more inflame our love to
him than our recovery from death by the oblation of his Son to misery and
death for us ? It doth as much engage our duty as secure our happiness.
It presents God glorious and gracious, and therefore every way fit to be
trusted in regard of the interest of his own glory in it, and in regard of the
efi'usions of his grace by it. It renders the creature obliged in the highest
manner, and so awakens his industry to the strictest and noblest obedience.
Nothing so efi'ectnal as a crucified Christ to wean us from sin and stifle all
motions of despair, a means, in regard of the justice signalised in it, to make
man to hate the sin which had ruined him, and a means, in regard of the
love expressed, to make him delight in that law he had violated. 2 Cor.
V. 14, 15, ' The love of Christ,' and therefore the love of God expressed in
it, * constrains us no longer to live to ourselves.'

1st, It is a ground of the highest comfort and confidence in God.
Since he hath given such an evidence of his impartial truth to his threaten-

voL. II. a

B6 charnook's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

ing for the honour of his justice, we need not question but he will be as
punctual to his promise for the honour of his mercy. It is a ground of
confidence in God, since he hath redeemed us in such a way as glorifies the
steadiness of his veracity, as well as the severity of his justice ; we may well
trust him for the performance of his promise, since we have experience of
the execution of his threatening ; his merciful truth will as much engage
him to accomplish the one, as his just truth did to inflict the other. The
goodness which shone forth in weaker rays in the creation, breaks out with
stronger beams in redemption. And the mercy which before the appearance
of Christ was manifested in some small rivulets, diffuseth himself like a
boundless ocean. That God that was our creator is our redeemer, the
' repairer of our breaches, and the restorer of our paths to dwell in,' and the
plenteous redemption from all iniquity, manifested in the incarnation and
passion of the Son of God, is much more a ground of hope in the Lord than
it was in the past ages, when it could not be said, ' The Lord hath, but
• the Lord shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities,' Ps. cxxx. 8. It is a
full warrant to cast ourselves into his arms.

2(Z/^, An incentive to obedience.

1st, The commands of the gospel require the obedience of the creature.
There is not one precept in the gospel which interferes with any rule in the
law, but strengthens it, and represents it in its true exactness. The heat
to scorch us is allayed, but the light to direct us is not extinguished. Not
the least allowance to any sin is granted, not the least afiection to any sin is
indulged. The law is tempered by the gospel, but not nulled and cast out
of doors by it ; it enacts that none but those that are sanctified shall be
glorified ; that there must be grace here, if we expect glory hereafter ; that
we must not presume to expect an admittance to the vision of God's face,
unless our souls be clothed with a robe of holiness, Heb. xii. 14 ; it requires
an obedience to the whole law in our intention and purpose, and an endeavour
to observe it in our actions ; it promotes the honour of God, and ordains an
universal charity among men ; it reveals the whole counsel of God, and
furnisheth men with the holiest laws.

2dly, It presents to us the exactest pattern for our obedience. The
redeeming person is not only a propitiation for the sin, but a pattern to the
sinner, 1 Peter ii. 21. The conscience of man, after the fall of Adam,
approved of the reason of the law, but by the corruption of nature man had
•no strength to perform the law. The possibiUty of keeping the law by
human nature is evidenced by the appearance and life of the Redeemer, and
an assurance given that it shall be advanced to such a state as to be able to
observe it. We aspire to it in this life, and have hopes to attain it in a
future. And while we are here, the actor of our redemption is the copy for
our imitation. The pattern to imitate is greater than the law to be ruled
by. What a lustre did his virtues cast about the world ! How attractive
are his graces ! With what high examples for all duties hath he furnished
us out of the copy of his life !

3dly, It presents us with the strongest motives to obedience. Titus
ii. 11, 12, * The grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness.' What chains
bind faster and closer than love ? Here is love to our nature, in his incar-
nation ; love to us through enemies, in his death and passion ; encourage-
ments to obedience by the proffers of pardon for former rebellions. By the
disobedience of man God introduceth his redeeming grace, and engageth his
creature to more ingenuous and excellent returns than his innocent state
<5ould oblige him to. In his created state he had goodness to move him,
he hath the same goodness now to oblige him as a creature, and a greater

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 67

love and mercy to oblige him as a repaired creature; and the terror of justice
is taken off, which might envenom his heart as a criminal. In his revolted
state, he had misery to discourage him; in his redeemed state, he hath love
to attract him. Without such a way, black despair had seized upon the
creature exposed to a remediless misery, and God would have had no
returns of love from the best of his earthly works ; but if any spark of
ingenuity be left, they will be excited by the efficacy of this argument.

This willingness of God to receive returning sinners is manifested in the
highest degree, and the willingness of a sinner to return to him in duty hath
the strongest engagements. He hath done as much to encourage our
obedience as to illustrate his glory. We cannot conceive what could be
done greater for the salvation of our souls, and consequently what could have
been done more to enforce our observance. We have a Redeeemer, as man
to copy it to us, and as God to perfect us in it. It would make the heart of
any to tremble, to wound him that hath provided such a salve for our sores,
and to make grace a warrant for rebellion, motives capable to form rocks
into a flexibleness. Thus is the wisdom of God seen in giving us a ground
of the surest confidence, and furnishing us with incentives to the greatest
obedience, by the horrors of wrath, death, and sufferings of our Saviour.

Eighthly, The wisdom of God is apparent in the condition he hath settled
for the enjoying the fruits of redemption ; and this is faith, a wise and
reasonable condition, and the concomitants of it.

1st, In that it is suited to man's lapsed state, and God's glory. Inno-
cence is not required here ; that had been a condition impossible in its own
nature after the fall. The rejecting of mercy is now only condemning where
mercy is proposed. Had the condition of perfection in works been required,
it had rather been a condemnation than redemption. Works are not
demanded, whereby the creature might ascribe anything to himself, but a
condition which continues in man a sense of his apostasy, abates all aspir-
ing pride, and makes the reward of grace, not of debt ; a condition whereby
mercy is owned, and the creature emptied ; flesh silenced in the dust, and
God set upon his throne of grace and authority ; the creature brought to the
lowest debasement, and divine glory raised to the highest pitch. The
creature is brought to acknowledge mercy, and seal to justice, to own the
holiness of God in the hatred of sin, the justice of God in the punishment of
sin, and the mercy of God in the pardoning of sin ; a condition that despoils
nature of all its pretended excellency ; beats down the glory of man at the
foot of God, 1 Cor. i. 29, 31. It subjects the reason and will of man to
the wisdom and authority of God ; it brings the creature to an unreserved
submission and entire resignation. God is made the sovereign cause of all;
the creature continued in his emptiness, and reduced to a greater depen-
dence upon God than by a creation ; depending upon him for a constant
influx, for an entire happiness : a condition that renders God glorious in
the creature, and the fallen creature happy in God ; God glorious in his
condescension to man, and man happy in his emptiness before God.

Faith is made the condition of man's recovery, that ' the lofty looks of
man might be humbled, and the haughtiness of man be pulled down,' Isa.
ii. 11. That every towering imagination might be levelled, 2 Cor. x. 5.
Man must have all from without doors ; he must not live upon himself, but
upon another's allowance. He must stand to the provision of God, and be
a perpetual suitor at his gates.

'Idly, A condition opposite to that which was the cause of the fall.
We fell from God by an unbelief of the threatening, he recovers us by a
belief of the promise ; by unbelief we laid the foundation of God's dishonour,

68 chaknock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

by faith therefore God exalts the glory of his free grace. We lost ourselves
by a desire of self-dependence, and our return is ordered by a way of self-
emptiness. It is reasonable we should be restored in a way contrary to
that whereby we fell. We sinned by a refusal of cleaving to God ; it is a
part of divine wisdom to restore us in a denial of our own righteousness and
strength.* Man having sinned by pride, the wisdom of God humbles him
(saith one) at the very root of the tree of knowledge, and makes him deny
his own understanding, and submit to faith, or else for ever to lose his
desired felicity.

Sdly, It is a condition suited to the common sentiment and custom of
the world. There is more of belief than reason in the world ; all instructors
and masters in sciences and arts require first a belief in their disciples, and
a resignation of their understandings and wills to them. And it is the wis-
dom of God to require that of man, which his own reason makes him sub-
mit to another, which is his fellow-creature. He therefore that quarrels with
the condition of faith must quarrel with all the world, since belief is the be-
ginning of all knowledge ; f yea, and most of the knowledge in the world
may rather come under the title of belief than of knowledge, for what we
think we know this day we may find from others such arguments as may
stagger our knowledge, and make us doubt of that we thought ourselves
certain of before ; nay, sometimes we change our opinions ourselves, with-
out any instructor, and see a reason to entertain an opinion quite contrary
to what we had before ; and, if we found a general judgment of others to
vote against what we think we know, it would make us give the less credit to
ourselves and our sentiments. All knowledge in the world is only a belief,
depending upon the testimony or arguings of others ; for, indeed, it may be
said of all men, as in Job, chap. viii. 9, ' We are but of yesterday, and know
nothing.' Since therefore belief is so universal a thing in the world, the
wisdom of God requires that of us which every man must count reasonable,
or render himself utterly ignorant of anything ; it is a condition that is
common to all religions. All religions are founded upon a belief; unless
men did believe future things, they would not hope nor fear. A belief and
resignation was required in all the idolatries in the world, so that God re-
quires nothing but what an universal custom of the world gives its sufirage
to the reasonableness of ; indeed, justifying faith is not suited to the senti-
ments of men, but that faith which must precede justifying, a belief of the
doctrine, though not comprehended by reason, is common to the custom of
the world. I It is no less madness not to submit our reason to faith, than
not to regulate our fancies by reason.

4Lthly, This condition of faith and repentance is suited to the con-
sciences of men. The law of nature teaches us that we are bound to
believe every revelation from God, when it is made known to us ; and not
only to assent to it as true, but embrace it as good. This nature dictates
that we are as much obliged to believe God, because of his truth, as to love
him because of his goodness. Every man's reason tells him he cannot obey
a precept, nor depend upon a promise, unless he believes both the one and
the other ; no man's conscience but will inform him, upon hearing the reve-
lation of God, concerning his excellent contrivance of redemption, and the
way to enjoy it, that it is very reasonable he should strip off all affections
to sin, lie down in sorrow, and bewail what he hath done amiss against so
tender a God. Can you expect that any man that promises you a great
.honour or a rich donative, should demand less of you than to trust his word,
bear an affection to him, and return him kindness ? Can any less be ex-

* Laud against Fisher, p. 5. f Bradward. p. 28. J Janeway, p. 83.

Rom. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 69

pected by a prince than obedience from a pardoned subject, and a redeemed
captive ? If you have injured any man in his body, estate, reputation,
would yot} not count it a reasonable condition for thejpartaking of his clemency
and forgiveness, to express a hearty sorrow for it, and a resolution not to
fall into the like crime again ? Such are the conditions of the gospel, suited
to the consciences of men,

5thly, The wisdom of God appears in that this condition was only likely
to attain the end. There are but two common heads appointed by God,
Adam and Christ : by one we are made a living soul, by the other a quick-
ening spirit ; by the one we are made sinners, by the other we are made
righteous. Adam fell as a head, and all his members, his whole issue and
posterity, fell with him, because they proceeded from him by natural gene-
ration ; but since the second Adam cannot be our head by natural genera-
tion, there must be some other way of ingrafting us in him, and uniting us
to him as our head, which must be moral and spiritual. This cannot ration-
ally be conceived to be by any other way than what is suitable to a reason-
able creature, and therefore must be by an act of the will, consent, and
acceptance, and owning the terms settled for an admission to that union ;
and this is that we properly call faith, and therefore called a ' receiving of
him,' John i. 12.

1st, Now this condition of enjoying the fruits of redemption could not
be a bare knowledge, for that is but only an act of the understanding, and
doth not in itself include the act of the will, and so would have united only
one faculty to him, not the whole soul ; but faith is an act both of the under-
standing and will too, and principally of the will, which doth presuppose an
act of the understanding, for there cannot be a persuasion in the will with-
out a proposition from the understanding. The understanding must be
convinced of the truth and goodness of a thing before the will can be per-
suaded to make any motion towards it, and therefore all the promises, invi-
tations, and proffers are suited to the understanding and will : to the
understanding in regard of knowledge, to the will in regard of appetite ; to
the understanding as true, to the will as good ; to the understanding as
practical and influencing the will.

2dly, Nor could it be an entire obedience. That, as was said before,
would have made the creature have some matter of boasting, and this was
not suitable to the condition he was sunk into by the fall ; besides, man's
nature being corrupted, was rendered uncapable to obey, and unable to have
one thought of a due obedience, 2 Cor. iii. 5.

When man turned from God, and upon that was turned out of paradise,
his return was impossible by any strength of his own ; his nature was as
much corrupted as his re- entrance into paradise was prohibited. That
covenant, whereby he stood in the garden, required a perfection of action
and intention in the observance of all the commands of God ; but his fall had
cracked his ability to recover happiness by the terms and condition of an
entire obedience. Yet man being a person governable by a law, and cap-
able of happiness by a covenant, if God would restore him, and enter into
a covenant with him, we must suppose it to have some condition, as all
covenants have. That condition could not be works, because man's nature
was polluted. Indeed, had God reduced man's body to the dust, and his
soul to nothing, and framed another man, he might have governed him by a
covenant of works ; but that had not been the same man that had revolted,
and upon his revolt was stained and disabled. But suppose God had, by
any transcendent grace, wholly purified him from the stain of his former
transgression, and restored to him the strength and ability he had lost,

70 charnock's works. [Kom. XYI. 27.

might lie not as easily have rebelled again ? And so the condition would
never have been accomplished, the covenant never have been performed,
and happiness never have been enjoyed. There must be some other con-
dition, then, in the covenant God would make for man's security.

Now faith is the most proper for receiving the promise of pardon of sin ;
belief of those promises is the first natural recollection that a malefactor can
make upon a pardon offered him, an acceptance of it is the first consequent
from that belief. Hence is faith entitled a ' persuasion of,* and * embracing
the promises,' Heb. xi. 13, and a * receiving the atonement,' Rom. v. 11.

Thus the wisdom of God is apparent in annexing such a condition to the
covenant, whereby man is restored, as answers the end of God for his glory,
the state, conscience, and necessity of man, and had the greatest congruity
to his recovery.

Ninthly, This wisdom of God is manifest in the manner of the publishing
and propagating this doctrine of redemption.

1st, In the gradual discoveries of it. Flashing a great light in the face
of a sudden is amazing ; should the sun glare in our eye in all it brightness
on a sudden, after we have been in a thick darkness, it would blindus, instead
of comforting us ; so great a work as this must have several digestions.

God first reveals of what seed the redeeming person should be, ' the seed
of the woman,' Gen. iii. 15. Then of what nation. Gen. xxvi. 4, then of
what tribe. Gen. xlix. 12, of the tribe of Judah ; then of what family, the
family of David ; then what works he has to do, what sufferings to undergo.
The first predictions of our Saviour were obscure. Adam could not well
see the redemption in the promise, for the punishment of death, which suc-
ceeded in the threatening ; the promise exercised his faith, and the obscurity
and bodily death his humility. The promise made to Abraham was clearer
than the revelations made before, yet he could not tell how to reconcile his
redemption with his exile. God supported his faith by the promise, and
exercised his humility by making him a pilgrim, and keeping him in a per-
petual dependence upon him in all his motions.

The declarations to Moses are brighter than those to Abraham ; the de-
lineations of Christ by David in the Psalms, more illustrious than the former;
and all those exceeded by the revelations made to the prophet Isaiah and
the other prophets, according as the age did approach wherein the Redeemer
was to enter into his ofiice.

God wrapped up this gospel in a multitute of types and ceremonies, fitted
to the infant state of the church. Gal. iv. 3. An infant state is usually
affected with sensible things, yet those ceremonies were fitted to that great
end of the gospel, which he would bring forth in time to the world. And
the wisdom of God in them would be amazing, if we could understand the
analogy between every ceremony in the law and the thing signified by it ; as
it cannot but affect a diligent reader to observe that little account of them
we have by the apostle Paul, sprinkled in his epistles, and more largely in
that to the Hebrews. As the poHtical laws of the Jews flowed from the
depths of the moral law, so their ceremonial did from the depths of evangeli-
cal counsels, and all of them had a special relation to the honour of God
and the debasing the creature.

Though God formed the mass and matter of the world at the first creation
at once, yet his wisdom took six days' time for the disposing and adorning
it. The more illustrious truths of God are not to be comprehended on a
sudden by the weakness of men. Christ did not declare all truths to his
disciples in the time of his life, because they were not able at that present
to bear them : John svi. 12, * Ye cannot bear them now.' Some were re-

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 71

served for his resurrection, others for the coming of the Spirit ; and the full
discovery of all kept back for another world. This doctrine God figured out
in the law, oracled by the prophets, and unveiled by Christ and his apostles.

2dly, The wisdom of God appeared, in using all proper means to render
the belief of it easy.

1st, The most minute things that were to be transacted were predicted,
in the ancient foregoing age, long before the coming of the Redeemer. The
vinegar and gall offered to him upon the cross, the parting his garments, the
not breaking of his bones, the piercing of his hands and feet, the betraying
of him, the slighting of him by the multitude, all were exactly painted and
represented in variety of figures. There was light enough to good men not
to mistake him ; and yet not so plain, as to hinder bad men from being
serviceable to the counsels of God in the crucifying of him when he came.

2dly, The translation of the Old Testament from the private language
of the Jews into the most public language of the world, that translation which
we call Septuagint, from Hebrew into Greek, some years before the coming
of Christ, that tongue being most diffused at that time, by reason of the
Macedonian empire raised by Alexander, and the university of Athens, to
which other nations resorted for learning and education. This was a pre-
paration for the sons of Japhet to dwell in the tents of Shem. By this was
the entertainment of the gospel facilitated, when they compared the prophe-
cies of the Old Testament with the declarations of the New, and found things
80 long predicted before they were transacted in the public view.

3dly, By ordering concurrent testimonies as to matter of fact, that the
matter of fact was not deniable. That there was such a person as Christ,
that his miracles were stupendous, that his doctrine did not incline to sedi-
tion, that he affected not worldly applause, that he did suffer at Jerusalem,
was acknowledged by all ; not a man among the greatest enemies of Christians
was found, that denied the matter of fact. And this great truth, that Christ
is the Messiah and Redeemer, hath been, with universal consent, owned by
all the professors of Christianity throughout the world. Whatever bickerings
there have been among them about some particular doctrines, they all centred
in that truth of Christ's being the Redeemer. The first publication of this
doctrine was sealed by a thousand miracles, and so illustrious, that he was
an utter stranger to the world that was ignorant of them.

4thly, In keeping up some principles and opinions in the world to
facilitate the belief of this, or render men inexcusable for rejecting of it.
The incarnation of the Son of God could not be so strange to the world, if
we consider the general belief of the appearances * of their gods among them ;
that the Epicureans, and others that denied any such appearances, were
counted atheists.f And Pythagoras was esteemed to be one, not of the in-
ferior genii and lunar demons, but one of the higher gods, who appeared in
a human body, for the curing and rectifying mortal life ; | and himself tells
Abaris the Scythian, that he was avd^uTrofj^o^fog, that he took the flesh of
man, that men might not be astonished at him, and in a frigbt fly from his
instructions. It was not therefore accounted an irrational thing among them,
that God should be incarnate ; but indeed, the great stumbling-block was a
crucified God. But had they known the holy and righteous nature of God,
the malice of sin, the universal corruption of human nature, the first threat-
ening, and the necessity of vindicating the honour of the law, and clearing
the justice of God, the notion of his crucifixion would not have appeared so
incredible, since they believed the possibility of an incarnation.

* 'Empdviiai. t Dionys. Halicar. Antiq., 1. ii. p. 128.

t lamblich. Vit. Pythag., 1. i. cap. vi. p. 44, et lib. ii. c. xix. p. 94.

72 chabnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

Another principle was that universal one of sacrifices for expiation, and
rendering God propitious to man, and was practised among all nations. I
remember not any wherein this custom did not prevail, for it did even among
those people where the Jews, as being no trading nation, had not any com-
merce, and also in America, found out in these latter ages. It was not a
law of nature (no man can find any such thing written in his own heart),
but a tradition from Adam. Now that among the loss of so many other
doctrines, that were handed down from Adam to his immediate posterity, as
in particular that of the ' seed of the woman,' which one would think a
necessary appendix to that of sacrificing, this latter should be preserved as
a fragment of an ancient tradition, seems to be an act of divine wisdom, to
prepare men for the entertainment of the doctrine of the great sacrifice for
the expiation of the sin of the world. And as the apostle forms his argument
from the Jewish sacrifices in the Epistle to the Hebrews, for the convincing
them of the end of the death of Christ, so did the ancient fathers make use
of this practice of the heathen, to convince them of the same doctrine.

5thly, The wisdom of God appeared, in the time and circumstances of
the first solemn publication of the gospel by the apostles at Jerusalem. The
relation you may read in Acts ii. 1-12. The Spirit was given to the apostles
on the day of Pentecost, a time wherein there were multitudes of Jews from
all nations, not only near but remote, that heard the great things of God
spoken in the several languages of those nations where their habitations
were fixed, and that by twelve illiterate men, that two or three hours before
knew no language but that of their native country.

It was the custom of the Jews that dwelt among other nations at a distance
from Jerusalem , to assemble together at Jerusalem at the feast of Pentecost ; and
God pitched upon this season, that there might be witnesses of this miracle in
many parts of the world. There were some of every nation under heaven,
ver. 5, that is, of that known part of the world, so saith the text. Fourteen
several nations are mentioned, and proselytes as well as Jews by birth. They
are called devout men, men of conscience, whose testimony would carry weight
with it among their neighbours at their return, because of their reputation
by their religious carriage.

Again, this was not heard and seen by some of them at one time, and
some at another, by some one hour, by others the next successively,* but
altogether in a solemn assembly, that the testimony of so many witnesses
at a time might be more valid, and the truth of the doctrine appear more
illustrious and undeniable. And it must needs be astonishing to them, to
hear that person magnified in so miraculous a manner, who had so lately
been condemned by their countrymen as a malefactor.

Wisdom consists in the timing of things. And in this circumstance doth
the wisdom of God appear, in furnishing the apostles with the Spirit at such
a time, and bringing forth such a miracle as the gift of tongues on a sudden,
that every nation might hear in their own language the wonder of redemp-
tion, and as witnesses at their returns into their own countries, report it to
others, that the credit they had in their several places might facilitate the
belief and entertainment of the gospel, when the apostles or others should
arrive to those several charges and dioceses appointed for them to preach
the gospel in. Had this miracle been wrought in the presence only of the
inhabitants of Judea, that understood only their own language, or one or
two of the neighbouring tongues, it had been counted by them rather a
madness than a miracle. Or had they understood all the tongues which
they spoke, the news of it had spread no further than the limits of their
* Faucheur in loc, p. 294, 295.

Rom. XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 73

own habitations, and had been confined within the narrow bounds of the land
of Judea. But now it is carried to several remote nations, where any of
those auditors then assembled had their residence.

As God chose the time of the passover for the death of Christ, that there
might be the greatest number of the inhabitants of the country as witnesses
of the matter of fact, the innocence and sufferings of Christ, so he chose the
time of Pentecost for the first publishing the value and end of this blood to
the world.

Thus the evangelical law was given in a confluence of people from aU
parts and nations, because it was a covenant with all nations. And the
variety of languages spoken by a company of poor Galileans, bred up at the
Lake of Tiberias, and in poor corners of Canaan, without the instructions of
men for so great a skill, might well evidence to the hearers, that God, that
brought the confusion of languages first at Babel, did only work that cure of
them, and combine all together at Jerusalem.

2dly, The wisdom of God is seen in the instruments he employed in
the publishing the gospel. He did not employ philosophers, but fishermen ;
used not acquired arts, but infused wisdom and courage. This treasure was
put into and preserved in earthen vessels, that the wisdom, as well as the
power of God, might be magnified. The weaker the means are which attain
the end, the greater is the skill of the conductor of them.

Wise princes choose men of most credit, interest, wisdom, and ability to
be ministers of their affairs and ambassadors to others. But what were
these that God chose for so great a work as the publishing a new doctrine
to the world ? What was their quality but mean, what was their authority
without interest? What was their ability, without eminent parts for so
great a work, but what divine grace in a special manner endowed them with ?
Nay, what was their disposition to it ? As dull and unwieldy. Witness the
frequent rebukes for their slow-heartedness from their Master when he con-
versed in the flesh with them. And one of the greatest of them, so fond of
the Jewish ceremonies and pharisaical principles, wherein he had been more
than ordinarily principled, that he hated the Christian religion to extirpa-
tion, and the professors of it to death. By those ways which were out of
the road of human wisdom, and would be accounted the greatest absurdity
to be practised by men that have a repute for discretion, did God advance
his wisdom. 1 Cor. i. 25, ' The foohshness of God is wiser than man.'
By this means it was indisputably evidenced to unbiassed minds that the
doctrine was divine. It could not rationally be imagined that instruments
destitute of all human advantages should be able to vanquish the world,
confound Judaism, overturn heathenism, chase away the devils, strip them
of their temples, alienate the minds of men from their several religions,
which had been rooted in them by education, and established by a long
succession. It could not, I say, reasonably be imagined to be without a
supernatural assistance, an heavenly and efficacious working. Whereas, had
God taken a course agreeable to the prudence of man, and used those that
had been furnished with learning, tipped with eloquence, and armed with
human authority, the doctrines would have been thought to have been of a
human invention, and to be ^ome subtle contrivance for some unworthy and
ambitious end. The nothingness and weakness of the instruments manifest
them to be conducted by a divine power, and declare the doctrine itself to
be from heaven.

When we see such feeble instruments proclaiming a doctrine repugnant
to flesh and blood, sounding forth a crucified Christ to be believed in and
trusted on, and declaiming against the reUgion and worship under which the

74 chabxock's wobks. [Rom. XYI. 27.

Roman empire had long flourished, exhorting them to the contempt of the
world, preparation for afflictions, denying themselves and their own honours
by the hopes of an unseen reward, things so repugnant to flesh and blood ;
and these instruments concurring in the same story, with an admirable har-
mony in all parts, and sealing this doctrine with their blood, can we upon
all this ascribe this doctrine to a human contrivance, or fix any lower author
of it than the wisdom of Heaven ? It is the wisdom of God that carries on
his own designs in methods most suitable to his own greatness, and different
from the customs and modes of men, that less of humanity, and more of
divinity might appear.

4ithly, The wisdom of God appears in the ways and manner, as well
as in the instruments, of its propagation. By ways seemingly contrary.
You know how God had sent the Jews into captivity in Babylon, and though
he struck off" their chains, and restored them to their country, yet many of
them had no mind to leave a country wherein they had been born and bred.
The distance from the place of the original of their ancestors, and their
affection to the country wherein they were born, might have occasioned
their embracing the idolatrous worship of the place. Afterwards, the perse-
cutions of Antiochus scattered many of the Jews for their security into
other nations, yet a great part, and perhaps the greatest, preserved their
religion, and by that were obliged to come every year to Jerusalem to offer,
and so were present at the effusion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost,
and were witnesses of the miraculous effects of it. Had they not been dis-
persed by persecution, and had they not resided in several countries, and
been acquainted with their languages, the gospel had not so easily been
diffused into several countries of the world. The first persecutions also
raised against the church propagated the gospel ; the scattering of the dis-
ciples inflamed their courage and dispersed the doctrine. Acts viii. 3 ;
according to the prophecy of Daniel, Dan, xii. 4. ' Many should run to and
fro, and knowledge should be increased.' The flights and hurryings of men
should enlarge the territories of the gospel. There was not a tribunal but
the primitive Christians were cited to, not a horrible punishment but was
inflicted upon them. Treated they were as the dregs and offals of mankind,
as the common enemies of the world ; yet the flames of the martyrs bright-
ened the doctrine and the captivity of its professors, made way for the
throne of its empire. The imprisonment of the ark was the downfall of
Dagon. Religion grew stronger by sufferings, and Christianity taller by
injuries. What can this be ascribed to but the conduct of a wisdom
superior to that of men and devils, defeating the methods of human and
hellish policy, thereby making ' the wisdom of this world foolishness with
God ?' 1 Cor. iii. 19.

V. The use ; of information. If wisdom be an excellency of the divine
nature, then,

1. Christ's deity may hence be asserted. Wisdom is the emphatical title
of Christ in Scripture, Prov. viii. 12, 13, 31, where Wisdom is brought in
speaking as a distinct person, ascribing counsel, and understanding, and the
knowledge of witty inventions to itself. He is called also ' the power of
God, and the wisdom of God,' 1 Cor. i. 24. And the ancients generally
understood that place. Col. ii. 3, ' In him are hid all the treasures of wis-
dom and knowledge,' as an assertion of the Godhead of Christ, in regard of
the infiniteness of his knowledge, referring wisdom to his knowledge of
divine things, and knowledge to his understanding of all human things.
But the natural sense of the place seems to be this, that all wisdom and

Bom, XYI. 27.] god's wisdom. 75

knowledge is displayed by Christ in the gospel ; and the words h aZru) refer
either to Christ, or the mystery of God spoken of, ver. 2. But the deity of
Christ, in regard of infinite wisdom, may be deduced from his creation of
things, and his government of things, both which are ascribed to him in
Scripture. The first ascribed to him, John i. 3, ' All things were made by
him ; and without him was not anything made that was made.' The second,
John V. 22, ♦ The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son ; ' and
both put together, Col. i. 16, 17.

Now, since he hath the government of the world, he hath the perfections
necessary to so great a work. As the creation of the world, which is
ascribed to him, requires an infinite power, so the government of the world
requires an infinite wisdom. That he hath the knowledge of the hearts of
men was proved in handling the omniscience of God. That knowledge
would be to little purpose, without wisdom to order the motions of men's
hearts, and conduct all the qualities and actions of creatures to such an end
as is answerable to a wise government ; we cannot think so great an employ-
ment can be without an ability necessary for it. The government of men
and angels is a great part of the glory of God ; and if God should entrust
the greatest part of his glory in hands unfit for so great a trust, it would be
an argument of weakness in God, as it is in men, to pitch upon unfit instru-
ments for particular charges. Since God hath therefore committed to him
his greatest glory, the conduct of all things for the highest ends, he hath a
wisdom requisite for so great an end, which can be no less than infinite. If,
then, Christ were a finite person, he would not be capable of an infinite
communication ; he could not be a subject wherein infinite wisdom could
be lodged ; for the terms finite and infinite are so distant, that they cannot
commence* one another ; finite can never be changed into infinite, no more
than infinite can into finite.

2. Hence we may assert the right and fitness of God for the government
of the world, as he is the wisest being. Among men, those who are excel-
lent in judgment are accounted fittest to preside over and give orders to
others ; the wisest in a city are most capable to govern a city ; or at least,
though ignorant men may bear the title, yet the advice of the soundest and
skilfuUest heads should prevail in all public afl'airs. We see in nature, that
the eye guides the body, and the mind directs the eye.

Power and wisdom are the two arms of authority.! "Wisdom knows the
end and directs the means ; power executes the means designed for such an
end. The more splendid and strong those are in any, the more authority
results from thence for the conduct of others that are of an inferior orb.
Now, God being infinitely excellent in both, his ability and right to the
management of the w^orld cannot be suspected ; the whole world is but one
commonwealth, whereof God is the monarch. Did the government of the
world depend upon the election of men and angels, where could they pitch,
or where would they find perfections capable of so great a work but in the
supreme wisdom ? His wisdom hath already been apparent in those laws
whereby he formed the world into a civil society, and the Israelites into a
commonwealth : the one suited to the consciences and reasons of all his
subjects, and the other suited to the genius of that particular nation, drawn
out of the righteousness of the moral law, and applicable to all cases that
might arise among them in their government, so that Moses asserts that the
wisdom apparent in their laws enacted by God, as their chief magistrate,

* I do not know whether this means that they cannot be commensurate with one
another; or that they cannot be continuo-us, so that the one •commences' where the
other ends.— Ed. f Amyraut, Moral, torn. i. p. 258, 259.

76 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

would render them famous among other nations in regard of their wisdom
as well as their righteousness, Deut. iv. 6, 7, 9. Also, this perfection doth
evidence that God doth actually govern the world. It would not be a com-
mendable thing for a man to make a curious piece of clock-work, and take
no care for the orderly motion of it. Would God display so much of his
skill in framing the heaven and earth, and none in actual guidance of them
to their particular and universal ends ? Did he lay the foundation in order,
and fit every stone in the building, make all things in weight and measure, to
let them afterwards run at hap-hazard ? Would he bring forth his power to
view in the creation, and let a more glorious perfection lie idle, when it had
80 large a field to move in ? Infinite wisdom is inconsistent with inactivity.
All prudence doth illustrate itself in untying the hardest knots, and dispos-
ing the most difficult affairs to a happy and successful issue. All those
various arts and inventions among men which lend their assisting hand to
one another, and those various employments their several geniuses lead them
to, whereby they support one another's welfare, are beams and instincts of
divine wisdom in the government of the world. He that made all things in
wisdom, Ps. civ. 24, would not leave his works to act and move only accord-
ing to their own folly, and idly behold them jumble together, and run counter
to that end he designed them for ; we must not fancy a divine wisdom to be
destitute of activity.

3. Here we may see a ground of God's patience. The most impotent
persons are the most impatient when unforeseen emergencies arise, or at
events expected by them, when their feeble prudence was not a sufficient
match to contest with them or prevent them. But the wiser any man is,
the more he bears with those things which seem to cross his intentions,
because he knows he grasps the whole afi'air, and is sure of attaining the
end he proposeth to himself; yet, as a finite wisdom can have but a finite
patience, so an infinite wisdom possesses an infinite patience.

The wise God intends to bring glory to himself, and good to some of his
creatures, out of the greatest evils that can happen in the world. He
beholds no exorbitant afflictions and monstrous actions but what he can
dispose to a good and glorious end, even to ' work together for good to them
that love God,' Rom. viii. 28 ; and therefore doth not presently fall foul upon
the actors till he hath wrought out that temporary glory to himself and good
to his people which he designs. * The times of ignorance God winks at,'
till he had brought his Son into the world and manifested his wisdom in
redemption, and when this was done he presseth men to a speedy repentance,
Acts xvii. 30 ; that as he forbore punishing their crimes in order to the
displaying his wisdom in the designed redemption, so when he hath efiected
it, they must forbear any longer abusing his patience.

4. Hence appears the immutability of God in his decrees. He is not
destitute of a power and strength to change his own purposes, but his
infinite perfection of wisdom is a bar to his laying aside his eternal resolves
and forming new ones ; Isa. xlvi. 10, he resolves the end from the beginning,
and his counsel stands ; stands immoveable, because it is counsel. It is an
impotent counsel that is subject to a daily thwarting itself. Inconstant
persons are accounted by men destitute of a due measure of prudence. If
God change his mind, it is either for the better or the worse : if for the
better, he was not wise in his former purpose ; if for the worse, he is not
wise in his present resolve. No alteration can be without a reflection of
weakness upon the former or present determination. God must either cease
to be as wise as he wad before, or begin to be wiser than he was before the
change ; which to think or imagine is to deny a Deity. If any man

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 77

change his resolution, he is apprehensive of a flaw in his former purpose,
and finds an inconvenience in it which moves him to such a change ; which
must be either for want of foresight in himself, or want of a due considera-
tion of the object of his counsel, neither of which can be imagined of God
without a denial of the Deity. No ; there are no blots and blemishes in his
purposes and promises. Repentance indeed is an act of wisdom in the
creature, but it presupposeth folly in his former actions, which is incon-
sistent with infinite perfection. Men are often too rash in promising, and
therefore what they promise in haste they perform at leisure or not at all.
They consider not before they vow, and make after inquiries whether they
had best stand to it.

The only wise God needs not any after-game. As he is sovereignly wise,
he sees no cause of reversing anything, and wants not expedients for his ovra
purpose; and as he is infinitely powerful, he hath no superior to hinder him
from executing his will, and making his people enjoy the efiects of his wisdom.
If he had a recollection of thoughts (as man hath), and saw a necessity to
mend them, he were not infinitely wise in his first decrees. As in creation
he looked back upon the several pieces of that goodly frame he had erected,
and saw them so exact that he did not take up his pencil again to mend any
particle of the first draught, so his promises are made with such infinite
wisdom and judgment, that what he writes is irreversible and for ever, as
the decrees of the Medes and Persians. All the words of God are eternal,
because they are the births of righteousness and judgment : Hosea ii. 19,
' I will betroth thee to me for ever, in righteousness and judgments.' He
is not of a wavering and flitting discretion ; if he threatens, he wisely con-
siders what he threatens ; if he promises, he wisely considers what he pro-
mises, and therefore is immutable in both.

5. Hence it follows, that God is a fit object for our trust and confidence.
For God being infinitely wise, when he promises anything, he sees every-
thing which may hinder and everything which may promote the execution
of it ; so that he cannot discover anything afterwards that may move him
to take up after- thoughts, he hath more wisdom than to promise anything
hand over head, or anything which he knows he cannot accomplish. Though
God, as true, be the object of our trust, yet God, as wise, is the foundation
of our trust. We trust him in his promise ; the promise was made by
mercy, and it is performed by truth ; but wisdom conducts all means to the
accomplishment of it. There are many men whose honesty we can confide
in, but whose discretion we are difiident of; but there is no defect either of
the one or the other which may scare us from a depending upon God in our
concerns. The words of man's wisdom the apostle entitles enticing, 1 Cor.
ii. 4, in opposition to the words of God's wisdom, which are firm, stable,
and undeniable demonstrations. As the power of God is an encouragement
of trust, because he is able to effect, so the wisdom of God comes into the
rank of those attributes which support our faith. To put a confidence in
him, we must be persuaded not only that he is ignorant of nothing in the
world, but that he is wise to manage the whole course of nature, and dis-
pose of all his creatures for the bringing his purposes and his promises to
their designed perfection.

6. Hence appears the necessity of a public review of the management of
the world, and of a day of judgment. As a day of judgment may be inferred
from many attributes of God ; as his sovereignty, justice, omniscience, &c.,
so among the rest from this of wisdom. How much of this perfection will
lie unveiled* and obscure, if the sins of men be not brought to view, whereby

Qu. • veiled ' ?— Ed.

78 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

the ordering the unrighteoas actions of men by his directing and overruling
hand of providence, in subserviency to his own purposes and his people's
good, may appear in all its glory ? Without such a public review, this part
of wisdom will not be clearly visible ; how those actions, which had a vile
foundation in the hearts and designs of men, and were formed there to gratify
some base lust, ambition and covetousness, &c., were by a secret wisdom
presiding over them, conducted to amazing ends.

It is a part of divine wisdom to right itself, and convince men of the
reasonableness of its laws, and the unreasonablenes of their contradictions
to it. The execution of the sentence is an act of justice, but the conviction
of the reasonableness of the sentence is an act of wisdom, clearing up the
righteousness of the proceeding ; and this precedes, and the other follows :
Jude 15, * To convince all that are ungodly of all their ungodly deeds.'
That wisdom which contrived satisfaction, as well as that justice which
required it, is concerned in righting the law, which was enacted by it. The
wisdom of a sovereign lawgiver is engaged not to see his law vilified and
trampled on, and exposed to the lusts and afironts of men, without being
concerned in vindicating the honour of it. It would appear a folly to enact
and publish it, if there were not a resolution to right and execute it.

The wisdom of God can no more associate iniquity and happiness together,
than the justice of God can separate iniquity from punishment. It would
be defective if it did always tamely bear the insolences of offenders without a
time of remark of their crimes, and a justification of the precept rebelliously
spumed at. He would be unwise if he were unjust ; unrighteousness hath
no better a title in Scripture than that of folly. It is no part of wisdom to
give birth to those laws which he will always behold ineffectual, and neither
vindicate his law by a due execution of the penalty, nor right his own autho-
rity, contemned in the violation of his law, by a just revenge. Besides,
what wisdom would it be for the sovereign Judge to lodge such a spokes-
man for himself, as conscience in the soul of man, if it should be alway
found speaking, and at length be found false in all that it speaks ? There
is therefore an apparent prospect of the day of account, from the considera-
tion of this perfection of the divine nature.

7. Hence we have a ground for a mighty reverence and veneration of the
divine majesty. Who can contemplate the sparklings of this perfection in
the variety of the works of his hands, and the exact government of all his
creatures, without a raised admiration of the excellency of his being, and a
falling flat before him, in a posture of reverence to so great a being ? Can
we behold so great a mass of matter digested into several forms, so exact a
harmony and temperament in all the creatures, the proportions of numbers
and measures, and one creature answering the ends and designs of another,
the distinct beauties of all, the perpetual motion of all things without
checking one another; the variety of the nature of things, and all acting
according to their nature with an admirable agreement; and all together,
like differing strings upon an instrument, emitting divers sounds, but all
reduced to order in one delightful lesson ; I say, can we behold all this
without admiring and adoring the divine wisdom which appears in all ?

And from the consideration of this, let us pass to the consideration of his
wisdom in redemption ; in reconciling divided interests, untying hard knots,
drawing one contrary out of another ; and we must needs acknowledge that
the wisdom of all the men on earth, and angels in heaven, is worse than
nothing, and vanity in comparison of this vast ocean. And as we have a
greater esteem for those that invent some excellent artificial engines, what
reverence ought we to have for him that hath stamped an unimitable wisdom

KoM. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 79

upon all his works ! Nature orders us to give honour to our superiors in
knowledge, and confide in their counsels ; but none ought to be reverenced
as much as God, since none equals him in wisdom.

8. If God be infinitely wise, it shews us the necessity of our addresses to
him, and invocation of his name. We are subject to mistakes, and often
overseen; we are not able rightly to counsel ourselves. In some cases all
creatures are too short-sighted to apprehend them, and too ignorant to give
advice proper for them, and to contrive remedies for their case ; but with
the Lord there is counsel : Jer. xxxii. 19, ' He is great in counsel, and
mighty in working;' great in counsel to advise us, mighty in working to
assist us. We know not how to effect a design or prevent an expected evil.
We have an infinite wisdom to go to, that is every way skilful to manage
any business we desire, to avert any evil we fear, to accomplish anything
we commit into his hands. When we know not what to resolve, he hath a
counsel to guide us, Ps. Ixxiii. 24 ; he is not more powerful to effect what
is needful, than wise to direct what is fitting. All men stand in need of the
help of God, as one man stands in need of the assistance of other men, and
will not do anything without advice ; and he that takes advice, deserves the
title of a wise man, as well as he that gives advice. But no man needs so
much the advice of another man as all men need the counsel and assistance
of God ; neither is any man's wit and wisdom so far inferior to the prudence
and ability of an angel, as the wisdom of the wisest man and the most sharp-
sighted angel is inferior to the infinite wisdom of God. We see therefore
that it is best for us to go to the fountain, and not content ourselves with
the streams ; to beg advice from a wisdom that is infinite and infallible,
rather than from that which is finite and fallible.

Use 2. If wisdom be the perfection of the divine majesty, how prodigious
is the contempt of it in the world !

1. In general.

All sin strikes at this attribute, and is in one part or other a degrading of
it. The first sin directed its venom agaiust this. As the devils endeavoured
to equal their Creator in power, so man endeavoured to equal him in wis-
dom. Both, indeed, scorned to be ruled by his order ; but man evidently
exalted himself against the wisdom of God, and aspired to be a sharer with
him in his infinite knowledge ; would not let him be the only wise God, but
cherished an ambition to be his partner ; just as if a beam were able to ima-
gine it might be as bright as the sun, or a spark fancy it could be as full
fraught with heat as the whole element of fixe. Man would not submit to
the infinite wisdom of God in the prohibition of one single fruit in the
garden, when, by the right of his sovereign authority, he might have granted
him only the use of one. All presumptuous sins are of this nature, they are
therefore called reproaches of God : Num. xv. 30, ' The soul that doth
aught presumptuously reproacheth the Lord.' All reproaches are either for
natural, moral, or intellectual defects ; all reproaches of God must imply
either a weakness or unrighteousness in God. If unrighteousness, his holi-
ness is denied ; if weakness, his wisdom is blemished.

In general, all sin strikes at this perfection two ways.

(1.) As it defaceth the wise workmanship of God. Every sin is a deform-
ing and blemishing our own souls, which, as they are the prime creatures in
the lower world, so they have greater characters of divine wisdom in the
fabric of them ; but this image of God is ruined and broken by sin. Though
the spoiling of it be a scorn of his holiness, it is also an affront to his wis-
dom ; for though his power was the cause of the production of so fair a
piece, yet his wisdom was the guide of his power, and his holiness the pat-

80 charnock's works. [Kom. XVI. 27.

tern whereby he wrought it. His power effected it, and his holiness was
exemplified in it, but his wisdom contrived it.

If a man had a curious clock or watch, which had cost him many years'
pain, and the strength of his skill to frame it, for another, after he had
seen and considered it, to trample upon it, and crush it in pieces, would
argue a contempt of the artificer's skill. God hath shewn infinite art in the
creation of man, but sin unbeautifies man, and ravisheth his excellency. It
cuts and slasheth the image of God stamped by divine wisdom, as though it
were an object only of scorn and contempt. The sinner in every sin acts as
if he intended to put himself in a better posture, and in a fairer dress, than
the wisdom of God hath put him in by creation.

(2.) In the slighting his laws. The laws of God are highly rational,
they are drawn from the depths of the divine understanding, wherein there
is no unclearness and no defect. As his understanding apprehends all
things in their true reason, so his will enjoins all things for worthy and wise
ends ; his laws are contrived by his wisdom for the happiness of man, whose
happiness, and the methods to it, he understands better than men or angels
can do. His laws being the orders of the wisest understanding, every breach
of his law is a flying in the face of his wisdom. All human laws, though
they are enforced by sovereign authority, yet they are, or ought to be in the
composing of them, founded upon reason, and should be particular applica-
tions of the law of nature to this or that particular emergency. The laws
of God, then, who is summa ratio, are the birth of the truest reason, though
the reason of every one of them may not be so clear to us.

Every law, though it consists in an act of the will, yet doth presuppose
an act of the understanding. The act of the divine understanding in fram-
ing the law must be supposed to precede the act of his will in commanding
the observance of that law ; so every sin against the law is not only against
the will of God commanding, but the reason of God contriving, and a cleav-
ing to our own reason, rather than the understanding or mind of God : as
if God had mistaken in making his law, and we had more understanding to
frame a better, and more conducing to our happiness ; as if God were not
wise enough to govern us, and prescribe what we should do, and what we
should avoid ; as if he designed not our welfare, but our misfortune.

Whereas the precepts of God are not tyrannical edicts, or acts of mere
will, but the fruits of counsel, and therefore every breach of them is a
real^ declamation against his discretion and judgment, and preferring our
own imaginations, or the suggestions of the devil, as our rule, before the
results of divine counsel. While we acknowledge him wise in our opinion,
we speak him foolish by our practice, when, instead of being guided by him,
we will guide ourselves. No man will question but it is a controlling divine
wisdom to make alterations in his precepts, dogmatically, either to add some
of their own, or expunge any of his. And is it not a crime of the like re-
flection to alter them practically ? When we will observe one part of the
law, and not another part, but pick and choose where we please ourselves,
as our humours and carnal interest prompts us, it is to charge that part of
the law with folly which we refuse to conform unto.

The more cunning any man is in sin, the more his sin is against divine
wisdom, as if he thought to out- wit God. He that receives the promises of
God, and the testimony of Christ, * sets to his seal that God is true,' John
iii. 83 ; by the like strength of argument it will undeniably follow, that he
that refuseth obedience to his precept sets to his seal that God is foolish.
Were they not rational, God would not enjoin them ; and if they are rational,
we are enemies to infinite wisdom by not complying with them. If infinite

EoM. XVI. 27. J god's wisdom. 81

prudence hath made the law, why is not every part of it observed ; if it were
not made with the best wisdom, why is any part of it observed ? If the de-
facing his image be any sin, as being a defaming his wisdom in creation,
the breaking his law is no less a sin, as being a disgracing his wisdom in his
administration. It is upon this account, likely, that the Scripture so often
counts sinners fools, since it is certainly inexcusable folly to contradict un-
deniable and infallible wisdom, yet this is done in the least sin. And as he
that breaks one tittle of the law is deservedly accounted guilty of the breach
of the whole, James ii. 10, so he that despiseth the least stamp of wisdom
in the minutest part of the law is deservedly counted as a contemner of it in
the frame of the whole statute-book.

2. But in particular, the wisdom of God is affronted and invaded ;

(1.) By introducing new rules and modes of worship, different from divine
institutions. Is not this a manifest reflection on this perfection of God, as
though he had not been wise enough to provide for his own honour, and
model his own service, but stood in need of our directions, and the capri-
chioes of our brains ? Some have observed, that it is a greater sin in wor-
ship to do what we should not, than to omit what we should perform.* The
one seems to be out of weakness, because of the high exactness of the law ;
and the other out of impudence, accusing the wisdom of God of imperfec-
tion, and controlling it in its institutions. At best it seems to be an impu-
tation of human bashfulness to the supreme sovereign, as if he had been
ashamed to prescribe all that was necessary to his own honour, but had left
something to the ingenuity and gratitude of men.

Man has, ever since the foolish conceit of his old ancestor Adam, presumed
he could be as wise as God ; and if he who was created upright entertained
such conceits, much more doth man now, under a mass of corruption, so
capable to foment them. This hath been the continual practice of men, not
so much to reject what once they had received as divine, but to add some-
thing of their own inventions to it.

The heathens renounced not the sacrificing of beasts for the expiation of
their offences (which the old world had received by tradition from Adam,
and the new world, after the deluge, from Noah), but they had blended that
tradition with rites of their own, and offered creatures unclean in them-
selves, and not fit to be offered to an infinitely pure being, for the distinc-
tion of clean and unclean was as ancient as Noah, Gen. viii. 20 ; yea,
before. Gen. vii. 2.

So the Jews did not discard what they had received from God, as circum-
cision, the passover, and sacrifices ; but they would mix a heap of heathenish
rites with the ceremonies of divine ordination, and practise things which he
had not commanded, as well as things which he had enjoined them. And
therefore it is observable, that when God taxeth them with this sin, he doih
not say, they brought in those things which he had forbidden into his wor-
ship ; but those things which he had not commanded, and had given no
order for, to intimate that they were not to move a step without his rule, —
Jer. vii. 31, ' They have built "the high places of Tophet, which I commanded
them not, nor came it into my heart ;' and Levit. x. 1, Nadab's and Abihu's
strange fire was ' not commanded,' — so charging them with impudence and
rashness in adding something of their own, after he had revealed to them
the manner of his service, as if they were as wise as God. So loth is man
to acknowledge the supremacy of divine understanding, and be sensible of
his own ignorance.

So after the divulging of the gospel, the corrupters of religion did not
* Strong of the Will.

VOL. II. F

82 chabnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

fling oflf, but preserved the institutions of God, but painted and patched them
up with pagan ceremonies ; imposed their own dreams with as much force
as the revelations of God. Thus hath the papacy turned the simplicity of
the gospel into pagan pomp, and religion into politics ; and revived the
ceremonial law, and raked some limbs of it out of the grave, after the wisdom
of God had wrung her knell, and honourably interred her ; and sheltered
the heathenish superstitions in Christian temples, after the power of the
gospel had chased the devils, with all their trumpery, from their ancient
habitations.

Whence should this proceed, but from a partial atheism, and a mean
conceit of the divine wisdom ? As though God had not understanding
enough to prescribe the form of his own worship ; and not wisdom enough
to support it, without the crutches of human prudence.

Human prudence is too low to parallel divine wisdom ; it is an incom-
petent judge of what is fit for an infinite majesty. It is sufficiently seen in
the ridiculous and senseless rites among the heathens, and the cruel and
devilish ones fetched from them by the Jews. What work will human
wisdom make with divine worship, when it will presume to be the director
of it, as a mate with the wisdom of God ? Whence will it take its measures,
but from sense, humour, and fancy ; as though what is grateful and comely
to a depraved reason, were as beautiful to an unspotted and infinite mind.
Do not such tell the world, that they were of God's cabinet council, since
they will take upon them to judge, as well as God, what is well pleasing to
him ? Where will it have the humility to stop, if it hath the presumption
to add any one thing to revealed modes of worship ? How did God tax the
Israelites with making idols ' according to their own understanding,' Hosea
xiii. 2, imagining their own understandings to be of a finer make and a
perfecter mould than their Creator's ; and that they had fetched more light
from the chaos of their own brains, than God had from eternity in his own
nature ! How slight will the excuse be, God hath not forbidden this or that,
when God shall silence men with the question, Where, or when did I com-
mand this or that ? There was no addition to be made under the law to
the meanest instrument God had appointed in his service. The sacred
perfume was not to have one ingredient more put into it, than what God had
prescribed in the composition ; nor was any man, upon pain of death, to
imitate it ; nor would God endure that sacrifices should be consumed with
any other fire, than that which came down from heaven : so tender is God
of any invasions of his wisdom and authority. In all things of his nature,
whatsoever voluntary humility and respect to God they may be disguised
with, there is a swelling of the fleshly mind against infinite understanding,
which the apostle nauseates. Col. ii. 18.

Such mixtures have not been blessed by God. As God never prospered
the mixtures of several kinds of creatures, to form and multiply a new species,
as being a dissatisfaction with his wisdom as creator, so he doth not prosper
mixtures in worship, as being a conspiracy against his wisdom as a lawgiver.
The destruction of the Jews was judged by some of their doctors to be for
preferring human traditions before the written word,* which they ground on
Isa. xxix. 13, ' Their fear of me was taught by the precepts of men.' The
injunctions of men were the rule of their worship, and not the prescripts of
my law.
^. To conclude ; such as make alterations in religion, difierent from the first

* Vaisin. The Talmud takes notice that the court of Bethany was wasted three
years before Jerusalem, because they preferred their own words before the words of
the law.

EoM. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 83

institution, are intolerable busy bodies, that will not let God alone with his
own affairs. Vain man would be wiser than his maker, and be dabbling in
that which is his sole prerogative.

(2.) In neglecting means instituted by God. When men have risings of
heart against God's ordinances, * they reject the counsel of the Lord against
themselves,' or ' in themselves,' Luke vii. 30, ridsrriirav. They disannulled
the wisdom of God, the spring of his ordinances. All neglects are disregards
of divine prescriptions, as impertinent and unavailable to that end for which
they were appointed, as not being suited to the common dictates of reason ;
sometimes out of a voluntary humility, such as Peter's was when he denied
Christ's condescension to wash his feet, John xiii. 8, and thereby judged of
the comeliness of his master's intention and action. Such as continually
neglect the great institution of the Lord's supper, out of a sense of un worthi-
ness, are in the same rank with Peter, and do, as well as he, fall under the
blame and reproof of Christ.

Men would be saved, and use the means ; but either means of their own
appointment, or not all the means of God's ordering.* They would have
God's wisdom and will condescend to theirs, and not theirs conformed to
God : as if our blind judgments were fittest to make the election of the
paths to happiness ; like Naaman, who, when he was ordered by the prophet
for the cure of his leprosy, to wash seven times in Jordan, would be the
prophet's director, and have him touch him with his hand ; as if a patient
sick of a desperate disease should prescribe to his skilful physician what
remedies he should order for his cure, and make his own infirm reason, or
his gust and palate the rule, rather than the physician's skill.

Men's inquiries are. Who will shew us any good ? They rather fasten
upon any means than what God hath ordained. We invert the order
divine wisdom hath established, when we would have God save us in our
own way, not in his.f It is the same thing as if we would have God nourish
us without bread, and cure our diseases without medicines, and increase our
wealth without our industry, and cherish our souls without his word and
ordinances. It is to demand of him an alteration of his methods, and a
separation of that which he hath by his eternal judgment joined together.
Therefore for a man to pray to God to save him, when he will not use the
means he hath appointed for salvation, when he slights the word, which is
the instrument of salvation, is a contempt of the wisdom of divine institutions.

Also in omissions of prayer ; when we consult not with God upon emer-
gent occasions, we trust more to our own wisdom than God's, and imply
that we stand not in need of his conduct, but have ability to direct ourselves
and accomplish our ends without his guidance. Not seeking God, is by the
prophet taxed to be a reflection upon this perfection of God : Isa. xxxi. 1, 2,
' They look not to the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord,' &e. And
the like charge he brings against them, Hosea viii. 9, ' They are gone up
to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself, not consulting God.'

(d.) In censuring God's revelations and actions, if they be not according
to our schemes. When we will not submit to his plain will, without pene-
trating into the um-evelated reason of it, nor adore his counsels without
controlhng them, as if we could correct both law and gospel, and frame a
better method of redemption than that of God's contriving. Thus men
slighted the wisdom of God in the gospel, because it did not gree with that
philosophical wisdom and reason they had sucked in by education from their
masters, 1 Cor. i. 21, 22 ; contrary to their practice in their superstitious
worship, where the oracles they thought divine were entertained with
* Pont. Medit. part ill. p. 366. t Durant. de Teut. p. 403, 404.

84 chaknock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

reverence, not with dispute, and though ambiguous, were not counted
ridiculous by the worshipper. How foolish is man in this wherein he would
be accounted wise ! Adam in innocence was unfit to control the doctrine
of God when the eye of his reason was clear, and much more are we since
the depravation of our nature.

The revelations of God tower above reason in its purity, much more
above reason in its mud and earthiness. The rays of divine wisdom are too
bright for our human understandings, much more for our sinful understand-
ings. It is base to set up reason, a finite principle, against an infinite wis-
dom ; much baser to set up a depraved and purblind reason against an
all-seeing and holy wisdom. If we would have a reason for all that God
speaks, and all that God acts, our wisdom must become infinite as his, or
his wisdom become finite as ours.

All the censures of God's revelations arise from some prejudicate opinions,
or traditional maxims, that have enthroned themselves in our minds, which
are made the standard whereby to judge of the things of God, and receive
or reject them, as they agree with or dissent from those principles, Col. ii. 8.
Hence it was that the philosophers in the primitive times were the greatest ene-
mies to the gospel ; and the contempt of divine wisdom, in making reason
the supreme judge of divine revelation, was the fruitful mother of the here-
sies in all ages springing up in the church, and especially of that Socinianism
that daily insinuates itself into the minds of men.

This is a wrong to the wisdom of God. He that censures the words or
actions of another, implies that he is in his censure wiser than the person
censured by him. It is as insupportable to determine the truth of God's
plain dictates by our reason, as it is to measure the suitableness or unsuit-
ableness of his actions by the humour of our will. We may sooner think
to span the sun, or grasp a star, or see a gnat swallow a leviathan, than
fully understand the debates of eternity.

To this we may refer too curious inquiries into divine methods, and ' in-
truding into those things which are not revealed,' Col. ii. 18. It is to afi"ect
a wisdom equal with God, and an ambition to be of his cabinet council. We
are not content to be creatures, that is, to be every way below God ; below
him in wisdom, as well as in power.

(4.) In prescribing God methods of acting. When we pray for a thing
without a due submission to God's will, as if we were his counsellors, yea,
his tutors, and not his subjects, and God were bound to follow our humours,
and be swayed according to the judgment of our ignorance ; when we would
have such a mercy which God thinks not fit to give, or have it in this
method, which God designs to convey through another channel ; thus we
would have the only wise God take his measures from our passions. Such
a controlling of God was Jonah's anger about a gourd : Jonah iv. 1, ' It dis-
pleased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.'

We would direct him how to dispose of us ; as though he that had infinite
wisdom to contrive and rear the excellent fabric of the world had not wis-
dom enough, without our discretion, to place us in a sphere proper for his
own ends, and the use he intends us in the universe. All the speeches of
men — Would I had been in such an office, had such charge : would I had
such a mercy, in such a method, or by such instruments — are entrenchments
upon God's wise disposal of afiairs.

This imposing upon God is a hellish imposition, and in hell we find it.
The rich man in hell, that pretends some charity for his brethren on earth,
would direct God a way to prevent their ruin, by sending one from the dead
to school them, as a more effectual means than Moses and the prophets,

KoM, XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 85

Luke xvi. 29, 30. It is a temper also to be found on earth ; what else was
the language of Saul's saving the Amalekites' cattle against the plain com-
mand of God ? 1 Sam. xv. 15. As if God in his fury had overshot himself,
and overlooked his altar, in depriving it of so great a booty for its service :
as if it were an unwise thing in God to lose the prey of so many stately cattle,
that might make the altar smoke with their entrails, and serve to expiate
the sins of the people ; and therefore he would rectify that which he thought
to be an oversight in God, and so magnifies his own prudence and discretion
above the divine.

We will not let God act as he thinks fit, but will be directing him, and
teaching him knowledge, Job xxi. 22 ; as if God were a statue, an idol, that
had eyes and saw not, hands but acted not, and could be turned, as an
image may be, to what quarter of the heaven we please ourselves. The wis-
dom of God is unbiassed ; he orders nothing but what is fittest for his end,
and we would bave our shallow brains the bias of God's acting. And wil
not God resent such an indignity, as a reflection upon his wisdom as well as
authority, when we intimate that we have better heads than he, and that he
comes short of us in understanding ?

(5.) In murmuring and impatience. One demands a reason why he hath
this or that cross ? why he hath been deprived of such a comfort, lost such
a venture, languisheth under such a sickness, is tormented with such pains,
oppressed by tyrannical neighbours, is unsuccessful in such designs ? In
these, and such like, the wisdom of God is questioned and defamed. All
impatience is a suspicion, if not a condemnation, of the prudence of God's
methods, and would make human feebleness and folly the rule of God's
dealing with his creatures. This is a presuming to instruct God, and a
reproving him for unreasonableness in his proceedings, when his dealings
with us do not exactly answer our fancies and wishes ; as if God, who made
the world in wisdom, wanted skill for the management of his creatures in
it : Job xl. 2, ' Shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct him ? He
that reproveth God, let him answer it.' We that are not wise enough to
know ourselves, and what is needful for us, presume to have wit enough to
guide God in his dealing with us. The wisdom of God rendered Job more
useful to the world by his afliictions, in making him a pattern of patience,
than if he had continued him in a confluence of all worldly comforts, wherein
he had been beneficial only in communicating his morsels to his poor neigh-
bours. All murmuring is a fastening error upon unerring wisdom.

(6.) In pride and haughtiness of spirit. No proud man, but sets his
heart as the heart of God, Ezek. xxviii. 2, 3. The wisdom of God hath
given to men diverse oflaces, set them in diverse places ; some have more
honourable charges, some meaner. Not to give that respect their offices and
places call for, is to quarrel with the wisdom of God, and overturn the rank
and order wherein he hath placed things.

It is unfit we should aff"ront God in the disposal of his creatures, and
intimate to him by our carriage, that he had done more wisely in placing
another, and that he hath done fooHshly in placing this or that man m
such a charge. Sometimes men are unworthy the place they fill : they may
be set there in judgment to themselves and others ; but the wisdom of God,
in his management of things, is to be honoured and regarded. "

It is an infringing the wisdom of God when we have a vain opinion of
ourselves, and are blind to others ; when we think ourselves monarchs, and
treat others as worms or flies in comparison of us. He who would reduce
all things to his own honour, perverts the order of the world, and would
constitute another order than what the wisdom of God hath established ;

86 charnock's works. [Kom. XVI. 27.

and move them to an end contrary to the intention of God, and charges God
with want of discretion and skill.

(7.) Distrust of God's promise is an impeachment of his wisdom, a
secret revihng of it, as if he had not taken due consideration of it before he
passed his word ; or a suspicion of his power, as if he could not accomplish
his word. We trust the physician's skill with our bodies, and the lawyer's
counsel with our estates, but are loath to rely upon God for the concerns of
our lives. If he be wise to dispose of us, why do we distrust him ? If we
distrust him, why do we embrace an opinion of his wisdom ?

Unbelief also is a contradiction to the wisdom of God in the gospel, &c.,
but that I have already handled in a discourse of the nature of unbelief.

Use 3. Of comfort. God hath an infinite wisdom to conduct us in our
affairs, rectify us in our mistakes, and assist us in our straits. It is an
inestimable privilege to have a God in covenant with us ; so wise, to com-
municate all good, to prevent all evil ; who hath infinite ways to bring to
pass his gracious intentions towards us. ' How unsearchable are his judg-
ments, and his ways past finding out ! ' Rom. xi. 33. His judgment or
decrees are incomprehensibly wise, and the ways of effecting them are as
wise as his resolves efiected by them. We can as little search into his
methods of acting as we can into his wisdom of resolving ; both his judg-
ments and ways are unsearchable.

1. Comfort in all straits and afflictions. There is a wisdom in inflicting
them, and a wisdom in removing them. He is wise to suit his medicines to
the humour of our disease, though he doth not to the humour of our wills.
He cannot mistake the nature of our distemper, or the virtue of his own
physic. Like a skilful physician, he sometimes prescribes bitter potions,
and sometimes cheering cordials, according to the strength of the malady,
and necessity of the patient, to reduce him to health. As nothing comes
from him but what is for our good, so nothing is acted by him in a rash and
temerarious way. His wisdom is as infinite as his goodness, and as exact
in managing as his goodness is plentiful in streaming out to us. He under-
stands our griefs, weighs our necessities, and no remedies are beyond the
reach of his contrivance. When our feeble wits are bewildered in a maze,
and at the end of their line for a rescue, the remedies unknown to us are
not unknown to God. When we know not how to prevent a danger, the
wise God hath a thousand blocks to lay in the Avay ; when we know not
how to free ourselves from an oppressive evil, he hath a thousand ways of
rehef.

He knows how to time our crosses, and his own blessings. The heart of
a wise God, as well as the heart of a wise man, ' discerns both time and
judgment,' Eccles. viii. 5. There is as much judgment in sending them as
judgment in removing them. How comfortable is it to think that our dis-
tresses, as well as our deliverances, are the fruits of infinite wisdom !
Nothing is done by him too soon or too slow, but in the true point of time,
with all its due circumstances, most conveniently for his glory and our good.
How wise is God, to bring the glory of our salvation out of the depths of a
seeming ruin, and make the evUs of aflliction subservient to the good of the
afiiicted !

2. In temptations ; his wisdom is no less employed in permitting them than
in bringing them to a good issue. His wisdom in leading our Saviour to be
tempted of the devil, was to fit him for our succour, and his wisdom in
suffering us to be tempted is to fit us for his own service, and our salvation.
He makes a thorn in the flesh to be an occasion of a refreshing grace to the
spirit, and brings forth cordial grapes from those pricking brambles, and

KoM. XVI, 27.J god's wisdom. 87

magnifies his grace by his wisdom from the deepest subtilties of hell. Let
Satan's intentions be what they will, he can be for him at every turn to out-
wit him in his stratagems, to baffle him in his enterprises, to make instru-
mental for our good where he designs nothing but our hurt. The Lord hath
his methods of deUverance from him : 2 Peter ii. 9, ' The Lord knows how
to deliver the godly out of temptation.'

3. In denials or delays of answers of prayer. He is gracious to hear, but
he is wise to answer in an acceptable time, and succour us in a day proper
for our salvation, 2 Cor. vi. 2. We have partial aifections to ourselves ;
ignorance is natural to us, Rom. viii. 26, we ask we know not what, because
we ask out of ignorance. God grants what he knows, what is fit for him to
do, and fit for us to receive, and the exact season wherein it is fittest for
him to bestow a mercy. As God would have us bring forth our fruit in
season, so he will send forth his mercies in season.

He is wise to suit his remedy to our condition, to time it so as that we
shall have an evident prospect of his wisdom in it, that more of divine skill,
and less of human, may appear in the issue. He is ready at our call, but he
will not answer till he see the season fit to reach out his hand. He is wise
to prove our faith, to humble us under the sense of our own unworthiness,
to whet our aflfections, to set a better estimate on the blessings prayed for,
and that he may double the blessing as we do our devotion ; but when his
wisdom sees us fit to receive his goodness, he grants what we stand in need
of. He is wise to choose the fittest time,;and faithful to give the best
covenant mercy.

4. In all evils threatened to the church by her enemies. He hath
knowledge to foresee them, and wisdom to disappoint them : Job v. 13,
' He taketh the wise iu their own craftiness, and the counsel of the froward
is carried headlong.'

The church hath the wisdom of God to enter the lists with the policy of
hell. He defeated the serpent in the first net he laid, and brought a glorious
salvation out of hell's rubbish, and is yet as skilful to disappoint the after-
game of the serpentine brood. The policy of hell, and the subtilty of the
world, are no better than folly with God, 1 Cor. iii. 19. All creatures are
fools, as creatures, in comparison with the Creator. The angels he chargeth
with folly, much more sinners.

Depraved understandings are not fit mates for a pure and unblemished
mind. Pharaoh, with his wisdom, finds a grave in the sea, and Ahithophel's
plots are finished in his own murder. He breaks the enemies by his power,
and orders them by his skill to be a feast to his people. Ps. Ixxiv. 14,
' Thou brakest the head of the leviathan, and gavest him to be meat to the
people in the wilderness.' The spoils of the Egyptians' carcasses cast upon
the shore served the Israelites' necessities (or were as meat to them), as
being a deliverance the church might feed upon in all ages, in a wilderness
condition, to maintain their faith, the vital principle of the soul.

There is a wisdom superior to the subtilties of men, which laughs at their
follies, and ' hath them in derision,' Ps. ii. 4. ' There is no wisdom or
counsel against the Lord,' Prov. xxi. 30. You never question the wisdom
of an artist to use his file when he takes it into his hand. Wicked instru-
ments are God's axes and files ; let him alone, he hath skill enough to
manage them. God hath too much aifection to destroy his people, and
wisdom enough to beautify them by the worst tools he uses. He can
make all things conspire in a perfect harmony for his own ends, and his
people's good, when they see no way to escape a danger feared, or attain a
blessing wanted.

88 chaknock's wokks. [Rom. XYI. 27.

Use 4. For exhortation.

1. Meditate on the wisdom of God in creation and government. How
little do we think of God when we behold his works ! Our sense dwells
upon the surface of plants and animals, beholds the variety of their colours,
and the progress in their motion. Our reason studies the qualities of them;
our spirits seldom take a flight to the divine wisdom which framed them.
Our senses engross our minds from God, that we scarce have a thought free to
bestow upon the maker of them, but only on the by. The constancy of
seeing things that are common stifles our admiration of God, due upon the
sight of them. How seldom do we raise our souls as far as heaven in our
views of the order of the world, the revolutions of the seasons, the natures
of the creatures that are common among us, and the mutual assistance they
give to each other ! Since God hath manifested himself in them, to neglect
the consideration of them is to neglect the manifestation of God, and the
way whereby he hath transmitted something of his perfections to our under-
standing. It renders men inexcusably guilty of not glorifying God, Rom.
i. 19, 20. We can never neglect the meditation of the creatures without a
blemish cast upon the Creator's wisdom. As every river can conduct us to
the sea, so every creature points us to an ocean of infinite wisdom. Not
the minutest of them, but rich tracts of this may be observed in them, and
a due sense of God result from them. They are exposed to our view, that
something^of God may be lodged in our minds ; that as our bodies extract their
quintessence for our nourishment, so our minds may extract a quintessence
for the maker's praise.

Though God is principally to be praised in and for Christ, yet as grace
doth not raze out the law of nature, so the operations of grace put not the
dictates of nature to silence, nor suspend the homage due to God upon our
inspection of his works. God hath given full testimonies of this perfection
in the heavenly bodies, dispersing their light, and distributing their influences
to every part of the world. In framing men into societies, giving them
various dispositions, for the preservation of governments ; making some
wise for counsel, others martial for action ; changing old empires, and raising
new. Which way soever we cast our eyes, we shall find frequent occasions
to cry out, ' Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God !' Rom. xi. 33.

To this purpose we must not only look upon the bulk and outside of his
works, but consider from what principles they were raised, in what order
disposed, and the exact symmetry and proportion of their parts. When a
man comes into a city or temple, and only considers the surface of the build-
ings, they will amaze his sense, but not better his understanding, unless he
considers the methods of the work, and the art whereby it was erected.

(1.) This was an end for which they were created. God did not make
the world for man's use only, but chiefly for his own glory ; for man's use
to enjoy his creatures, and for his own glory to be acknowledged in his
creatures, that we may consider his art in framing them, and his skill in
disposing them, and not only gaze upon the glass without considering the
image it represents, and acquainting ourselves whose image it is. The
creatures were not made for themselves, but for the service of the Creator
and the service of man. Man was not made for himself, but for the service
of the Lord that created him. He is to consider the beauty of the creation,
that he may thereby glorify the Creator. He knows in part their excel-
lency, the creatures themselves do not. If, therefore, man be idle, and
unobservant of them, he deprives God of the glory of his wisdom which he
should have by his creatures.

EoM. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 89

The inferior creatures themselves cannot observe it.' If man regard it not,
what becomes of it ; his glory can only be handed to him by man. The
other creatures cannot be active instruments of his glory, because they know
not themselves, and therefore cannot render him an active praise. Man is
therefore bound to praise God for himself and for all his creatures, because
he only knows himself and the perfections of the creatures, and the Author
both of himself and them.

God created such variety to make a report of himself to us ; we are to
receive the report, and to reflect it back to him. To what purpose did he
make so many things, not necessary for the support and pleasure of our
lives, but that we should behold him in them as well as in the other ?
" We cannot behold the wisdom of God in his own essence and eternal
ideas, but by the reflection of it in the creatures, as we cannot steadily
behold the sun with our eye, but either through a glass, or by reflection of
the image of it in the water. God would have us meditate on his perfec-
tions ; he therefore chose the same day wherein he reviewed his work, and
rested from it, to be celebrated by man for the contemplation of him, Gen.
ii. 2, 3, that we should follow his example, and rejoice as himself did, in
the frequent reviews of his wisdom and goodness in them. In vain would
the creatures afi'ord matter for this study if they were wholly neglected.

God offers something to our consideration in every creature. Shall the
beams of God shine round about us, and strike our eyes, and not afl'ect our
minds ? Shall we be like ignorant children, that view the pictures or point
to the letters in a book without any sense and meaning ? How shall God
have the homage due to him from his works, if man hath no care to observe
them ? The 148th Psalm is an exhortation to this. The view of them
should often extract from us a wonder of the like nature of that of David's :
Ps. civ. 24, ' 0 Lord, how wonderful are thy works ; in wisdom hast thou
made them all.' The world was not created to be forgotten, nor man created
to be unobservant of it.

(2.) If we observe not the wisdom of God in the views of the creatures,
we do no more than brutes. To look upon the works of God in the world
is no higher an act than mere animals perform. The glories of heaven and
beauties of the earth are visible to the sense of beasts and birds. A brute
beholds the motion of a man, as it may see the wheels of a clock, but under-
stands not the inward springs of motion, the end for which we move, or the
soul that acts us in our motion, much less that invisible power which pre-
sides over the creatures and conducts their motion. If a man do no more
than this, he goes not a step beyond a brutish nature, and may very well
acknowledge himself, with Asaph, a foolish and ignorant beast before God,
Ps. Ixxiii. 22. The world is viewed by beasts, but the author of it to be
contemplated by man. Since we are in a higher rank than beasts, we owe
a greater debt than beasts, not only to enjoy the creatures, as they do, but
behold God in the creatures, which they cannot do.

The contemplation of the reason of God in his works is a noble and suit-
able employment for a rational creature. We have not only sense to per-
ceive them, but souls to mind them. The soul is not to be without its
operation. Where the operation of sense ends, the work of the soul ought
to begin. We travel over them by our senses, as brutes, but we must pierce
further by our understandings, as men, and perceive and praise him that
lies invisible in his visible manufactures. Our senses are given us as
servants to the soul, and our souls bestowed upon us for the knowledge and
praise of their and our common Creator.

(3.) This would be a means to increase our humility. We should then

90 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

flag our wings and veil our sails, and acknowledge our own wisdom to be as
a drop to the ocean and a shadow to the sun. We should have mean
thoughts of the nothingness of our reason when we consider the sublimity
of the divine wisdom. Who can seriously consider the sparks of infinite
skill in the creature, without falling down at the feet of the divine Majesty,
and acknowledging himself a dark and foolish creature ? Ps. viii. 4, 5. When
the psalmist ' considered the heavens, the moon and stars,' and God's ordi-
nation and disposal of them, the use that results from it is, ' What is man,
that thou art mindful of him ?' We should no more think to mate him in
prudence, or set up the spark of our reason to vie with the sun. Our reason
would more willingly submit to the revelation, when the characters of divine
wisdom are stamped upon it, when we find his wisdom in creation incom-
prehensible to us.

(4.) It would help us in our acknowledgments of God for his goodness to
us. When we behold the wisdom of God in creatures below us, and how
ignorant they are of what they possess, it will cause us to reflect upon the
deeper impressions of wisdom in the frame of our own bodies and souls, an
excellency far superior to theirs. This would make us admire the magnifi-
cence of his wisdom and goodness, and sound forth his praise for advancing
us in dignity above other works of his hands, and stamping on us by infinite
art a nobler image of himself.

And by such a comparison of ourselves with the creatures below us, we
should be induced to act excellently, according to the nature of our souls ;
not brutishly, according to the nature of the creatures God hath put under
our feet.

(5.) By the contemplation of the creatures, we may receive some assist-
ance in clearing our knowledge in the wisdom of redemption. Though they
cannot of themselves inform us of it, yet since God hath revealed his
redeeming grace, they can illustrate some particulars of it to us. Hence the
Scripture makes use of the creatures to set forth things of a higher orb to
us. Our Saviour is called a sun, a vine, and a lion ; the Spirit likened to
a dove, fire, and water. The union of Christ and his church is set forth by
the marriage union of Adam and Eve.

God hath placed in corporeal things the images of spiritual, and wrapped up
in his creating wisdom the representations of bis redeeming grace ; whence
some call the creatures natural types of what was to be transacted in a new
formation of the world, and allusions to what God intended in and by Christ.

(6.) The meditation of God's wisdom in the creatures is in part a begin-
ning of heaven upon earth. No doubt but there will be a perfect opening
of the model of divine wisdom. Heaven is for clearing what is now obscure,
and a full discovering of what seems at present intricate : Ps. xxxvi. 9, ' In
his light shall we see light ;' all the light in creation, government, and
redemption. The wisdom of God in the new heavens and the new earth
would be to little purpose, if that also were not to be regarded by the inha-
bitants of them. As the saints are to be restored to the state of Adam, and
higher, so they are to be restored to the employment of Adam, and higher.
But his employment was to behold God in the creatures. The world was
so soon depraved, that God had but little joy in, and man but little know-
ledge"of, his works.

And since the wisdom of God in creation is so little seen by our ignorance
here, would not God lose much of the glory of it, if the glorified souls should
lose the understanding of it above, when their darkness shall be expelled,
and their advantages improved ; when the eye that Adam lost shall be fully
restored, and with a greater clearness ; when the creature shall be restored

Rom. XVI. 27.J god's wisdom. 91

to its true end, and reason to its true perfection, Rom. viii. 21, 22 ; when
the fountains of the depths of nature and government shall be opened, know-
ledge shall increase ; and according to the increase of our knowledge, shall
the admiration of divine wisdom increase also.

The wisdom of God in creation was not surely intended to lie wholly
unobserved in the greatest part of it ; but since there was so little time for
the full observation of it, there will be a time wherein the wisdom of God
shall enjoy a resurrection, and be fully contemplated by his understanding
and glorified creature.

2. Study and admire the wisdom of God in redemption. This is the duty
of all Christians. We are not called to understand the great depth of philo-
sophy ; we are not called to a skill in the intricacies of civil government, or
understand all the methods of physic ; but we are called to be Christians,
that is, studiers of divine, evangelical wisdom. There are first principles to
be learned, but not those principles to be rested in, without a further pro-
gress: Heb. vi. 1, ' Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ,
let us go on to perfection.' Duties must be practised, but knowledge is not
to be neglected. The study of gospel mysteries, the harmony of divine
truths, the sparkling of divine wisdom, in their mutual combination to the
great ends of God's glory and man's salvation, is an incentive to duty, a spur
to worship, and particularly to the greatest and highest part of worship, that
part which shall remain in heaven, the admiration and praise of God, and
delight in him. If we acquaint not ourselves with the impressions of the
glory of divine wisdom in it, we shall not much regard it as worthy our
observance in regard of that duty.

The gospel is a mystery ; and as a mystery hath something great and
magnificent in it, worthy of our daily inspection, we shall find fresh springs
of new wonders, which we shall be invited to adore with a religious astonish-
ment. It will both raise and satisfy our longings. Who can come to the
depths of ' God manifest in the flesh' ? How amazing is it, and unworthy
of a slight thought, that the death of the Son of God should purchase the
happy immortality of a sinful creature, and the glory of a rebel be wrought
by the ignominy of so great a person ! that our Mediator should have a
nature whereby to covenant with his Father, and a nature whereby to be a
surety for the creature ! How admirable is it, that the fallen creature should
receive an advantage by the forfeiture of his happiness ! How mysterious
is it, that the Son of God should bow down to death upon a cross, for the
satisfaction of justice, and rise triumphantly out of the grave, as a declara-
tion that justice was contented and satisfied ! that he should be exalted to
heaven to intercede for us, and at last return into the world to receive us,
and invest us with a glory for ever with himself !

Are these things worthy of a careless regard or a blockish amazement ?
What understanding can pierce into the depths of the divine doctrine of the
incarnation and birth of Christ, the indissoluble union of the two natures ?
What capacity is able to measure the miracles of that wisdom, found in the
whole draft and scheme of the gospel ? Doth it not merit then to be the
object of our daily meditation ? How comes it to pass then, that we are so
little curious to concern our thoughts in those wonders, that we scarce taste
or sip of these delicacies ? that we busy ourselves in trifles, and consider
what we shall eat, and in what fashion we shall be dressed ? please ourselves
with the ingeniousness of a lace or feather, admire a moth-eaten manuscript
or some half- worn piece of antiquity, and think our time ill- spent in the con-
templating and celebrating that wherein God hath busied himself, and eter-
nity is designed for the perpetual expressions of ?

92 chaenock's woeks. [Rom. XVI. 27.

How inquisitive are the blessed angels ! with what vigour do they renew
their daily contemplations of it, and receive a fresh contentment from it, still
learning and still inquiring ! 1 Pet. i. 12, their eye is never off the mercy-
seat ; they strive to see the bottom of it, and employ all the understanding
they have to conceive the wonders of it. Shall the angels be ravished with
it, and bend themselves down to study it, who have but little interest in it
in comparison of us, for whom it was both contrived and dispensed, and
shall not our pains be greater for this hidden treasure ? Is not that worthy
the study of a rational creature, that is worthy the study of the angeHcal ?
There must indeed be pains ; it is expressed by digging, Prov. ii. 4. A
lazy arm will not sink to the depth of a mine. The neglect of meditating
on it is inexcusable, since it hath the title and character of the wisdom of
God.

The ancient prophets searched into it when it was folded up in shadows,
when they saw only the fringes of Wisdom's garment, 1 Pet. i. 10 ; and
shall not we, since the sun hath mounted up in our horizon, and sensibly
scattered the light of the knowledge of this and the other perfections of God ?
As the Jewish Sabbath was appointed to celebrate the perfections of God
discovered in creation, so is the Christian Sabbath appointed to meditate on
and bless God for the discovery of his perfections in redemption. Let us
therefore receive it according to its worth ; let it be our only rule to walk by.
It is worthy to be valued above all other counsels ; and we should never think
of it without the doxology of the apostle, ' To the only wise God be glory
through Jesus Christ for ever !' that our speculations may end in affectionate
admirations and thanksgivings, for that which is so full of wonders. What
a little prospect should we have had of God and the happiness of man, had
not his wisdom and goodness revealed things to us ! The gospel is a mar-
vellous light, and should not be regarded with a stupid ignorance, and pur-
sued with a duller practice.

3. Let none of us be proud of, or trust in, our own wisdom, Man, by
affecting wisdom out of the way of God, got a crack in his head, v?hich hath
continued five thousand years and upwards ; and ever since, our own ' wisdom
and knowledge hath perverted us,' Isa. xlvii. 10. To be guided by this, is
to be under the conduct of a bhnd leader, and follow a traitor and enemy to
God and ourselves. Man's prudence often proves hurtful to him. He often
accomplisheth his ruin, while he designs his establishment, and finds his
fall where he thought to settle his fortune ; such bad eyes hath human wisdom
often in its own afiairs. Those that have been heightened with a conceit of
their own cunning, have at last proved the greatest fools. God delights to
' make foolish the wisdom of this world,' 1 Cor. i. 20.

Thus God writ folly upon the crafty brains of Ahithophel, and simplicity
upon the subtle projects of Herod against our Saviour ; and the devil, the
prince of carnal wisdom, was befooled into a furthering our redemption by
his own projects to hinder it. Carnal policy against the prescripts of divine
wisdom never prospers. It is like an upiis fatuus, which leads men out of
the way of duty and out of the way of security, and perverts them into the
mire and dangerous precipices.

When Jeroboam would coin a religion to serve his interests of state, he
tore up the foundations both of his kingdom and family. The way the Jews
took to prevent a fresh invasion of the Romans, by the crucifying Christ,
brought the judgment more swift upon them, John xi. 48. There is no man
ruined here or damned hereafter, but by his own wisdom and will. Prov.
iii. 5, 7, the fear of the Lord and departure from evil, are inconsistent with
an overweening conceit of our own wisdom, and leaning to our own under-

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 9g?

standing is inconsistent with a trusting in the Lord with all our hearts. It
is as much a deifying ourselves to trust to our own wit, as it is a deifying
the creature to affect or confide in it, superior to God, or equally with
him.

The true way to wisdom is to be sensible of our own folly : 1 Cor. iii. 18,
' If any man be wise, let him become a fool.' He that distrusts his own
guidance, will more securely and successfully follow the counsel of another
in whom he confides. The more water, or any other liquor, is poured out
of a vessel, the more air enters ; the more we distrust our own wisdom, the
more capable we are of the conduct of God's.

Had Jehoshaphat relied upon his own policy, he might have found a defeat
when he met with a deliverance ; but he disowned his own skill and strength
in telling God, ' We know not what to do, but our eyes are towards thee,'
2 Chron. xx. 12. Let us therefore, with Agur, disesteem our own under-
standing to esteem divine. Human prudence is like a spider's web, easily
blown away, and easily swept down by the besom of some unexpected revo-
lution. God, by his infinite wisdom, can cross the wisdom of man, and
make a man's own prudence hang in his own light : Isa. xxix. 14, ' The un-
derstanding of their prudent men shall be hid.'

4. Seek to God for wisdom. The wisdom we have by nature is like the
weeds the earth brings forth without tillage. Our wisdom since the fall is
the wisdom of the serpent, without the innocency of the dove ; it flows from
self-love, runs into self-interest. It is the wisdom of the flesh, and a pru-
dence to manage means for the contenting our lusts. Our best wisdom is
imperfect, a mere nothing and vanity, in comparison of the divine, as our
beings are in comparison of his essence. We must go to God for a holy
and innocent wisdom, and fill our cisterns from a pure fountain. The wis-
dom that was the glory of Solomon, w^as the donation of the Most High :
James i. 5, ' If any man want wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to
all men liberally, [and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.' The
faculty of understanding is from God by nature ; but a heavenly light to
direct the understanding is from God by grace. Children have an under-
standing, but stand in need of wise masters to rectify it, and form judicious
notions in it. * There is a spirit in man, but the inspiration of the Almighty
gives him understanding,' Job xxii. 8. We must beg of God wisdom. The
gospel is ' the wisdom of God ;' the concerns of it great and mysterious,
not to be known without a new understanding, 1 John v. 20. A new
understanding is not to be had but from the Creator of the first. The
Spirit of God is the * searcher of the deep things of God ;' the revealer of
them to us, and the enlightener of our minds to apprehend them ; and there-
fore called a ' Spirit of wisdom and revelation,' Eph. i. 17. Christ is made
wisdom to us as well as righteousness, not only by imputation, but eflusiou.*
Seek to God, therefore, for that wisdom which is like the sun, and not that
worldly wisdom which is like a shadow ; for that wisdom whose effects are
not so outwardly glorious, but inwardly sweet ; seek it from him, and seek
it in his word, that is the transcript of divine wisdom ; through his precepts
understanding is to be had, Ps. cxix. 104. As the wisdom of men appears
in their laws, so doth the wisdom of God in his statutes.

By this means we arrive to a heavenly sagacity. If these be rejected,
what wisdom can be in us ? A dream and conceit only : Jer. viii. 9, ' They
have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them ?' Who
knows how to order any concerns as he ought, or any one faculty of the
soul ? Therefore desire God's direction in outward concerns, in personal,
* Seaman's Sermon before the Parliament.

94 chaknock's works. [Kom. XVI. 27.

family, in private and public. He hath not only a wisdom for our salvation,
but for our outward direction. He doth not only guide us in the one, and
leave Satan to manage us in the other. Those that go with Saul to a witch
of Endor, go to hell for craft, and prefer the wisdom of the hostile serpent
before the holy counsel of a faithful Ci*eator. If 3-ou want health in your body,
you advise with a physician ; if directions for your estate, you resort to a
lawyer; if passage for a voyage, you address to a pilot; why not much
more yourselves, your all, to a wise God ? As Pliny said concerning a wise
man. Oh, sir, how many Catos are there in that wise person ! how much
more wisdom than men or angels possess, is infinitely centred in the
wise God !

5. Submit to the wisdom of God in all cases. "What else was inculcated
in the first precept, forbidding man to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, but that he should take heed of the swelling of his mind
against the wisdom of God ? It is a wisdom incomprehensible to flesh and
blood. We should adore it in our minds, and resign up ourselves to it in our
practice. How unreasonable are repinings against God, whereby a creature's
ignorance indicts and judges a Creator's prudence ? Were God weak in wis-
dom, and only mighty in power, we might suspect his conduct. Power
without wisdom and goodness is an unruly and ruinous thing in the world ;
but God being infinite in one, as well as the other, we have no reason to be
jealous of him, and repine against his methods ; why should we quarrel with
him that we are not as high or as wealthy as others ; that we have not pre-
sently the mercy we want ? If he be wise, we ought to stay his time, and
wait his leisure, because ' he is a God of judgment,' Isa. xxx. 18. Presume
not to shorten the time which his discretion hath fixed ; it is a folly to think
to do it. By impatience we cannot hasten rehef ; we ahenate him from us
by debasing him to stand at our bar, disturb ourselves, lose the comfort of
our lives and the sweetness of his mercy. Submission to God we are in no
case exempted from, because there is no case wherein God doth not direct
all the acts of his will by counsel. Whatsoever is drawn by a straight rule
must be right and straight ; the rule that is right in itself is the measure of
the straightness of everything else. Whatsoever is wrought in the world by
God must be wise, good, righteous ; because God is essentially wisdom,
goodness, and righteousness. Submit to God,

(1.) In his revelations.

[1.] Measure them not by reason. The truths of the gospel must ba
received with a self-emptiness and annihilation of the creature. If our rea-
son seems to lift up itself against revelation, because it finds no testimony for
it in its own light, consider how crazy it is in natural and obvious things, and
therefore sure it is not strong enough to enter into the depths of di-sdne wis-
dom. The wisdom of God in the gospel is too great an ocean to be con-
tained or laved out by a cockle-shell. It were not infinite, if it were not
beyond our finite reach ; our reason must as well stoop to his wisdom, as our
wills to his sovereignty. How great a vanity is it for a glow-worm to boast that
it is as full of light as the sun in the firmament ! for reason to leave its
proper sphere, is to fall into confusion, and thicken its own darkness.
We should settle ourselves in the beUef of the Scripture, and confirm
ourselves by a meditation on those many undeniable arguments for its
divine authority ; the fulfilling of its predictions, the antiquity of the
writing, the holiness of the precepts, the heavenliness of the doctrine, the
glorious effects it hath produced, and doth yet produce, different from
human methods of success, and submit our reason to the voice of so high
a majesty.

Rom. XVI. 27.J god's wisdom. 95

[2.] Not to be too curiously inquisitive into what is not revealed. There
is something hid in whatsoever is revealed. We know the Son of God was
begotten from eternity, but how he was begotten we are ignorant. We
know there is a union of the divine nature with the human, and that the
fulness of the Godhead dwells in him hodily ; but the manner of its inhabi-
tation we are in a great part ignorant of. We know God hath chosen some
and refused others, and that he did it with counsel ; but the reason why he
chose this man and not that, we know not ; we can refer it to nothing but
God's sovereign pleasure. It is revealed that there will be a day wherein
God shall judge the world, but the particular time is not revealed. We
know that God created the world in time ; but why he did not create the
v.'orld millions of years before, we are ignorant of, and our reasons would be
bewildered in their too much curiosity. If we ask why he did not create it
before, we may as well ask why he did create it then ? And may not the
same question be asked, if the world had been created millions of years
before it was ? That he created it in six days, and not in an instant, is
revealed ; but why he did not do it in a moment, since we are sure he was
able to do it, is not revealed. Are the reasons of a wise man's proceedings
hid from us, and shall we presume to dive into the reason of the proceed-
ings of an only wise God, which he hath judged not expedient to discover
to us ? Some sparks of his wisdom he hath caused to issue out, to exercise
and delight our minds ; others he keeps within the centre of his own breast.
We must not go about to unlock his cabinet : as we cannot reach to the
utmost lines of his power, so we cannot grasp the intimate reasons of his
wisdom. We must still remember that what is finite can never be able to
comprehend the reasons, motives, and methods of that which is infinite. It
doth not become us to be resty, because God hath not admitted us into the
debates of eternity. We are as little to be curious at what God hath hid, as
to be careless of what God hath manifested. Too great an inquisitiveness
beyond our line, is as much a provoking arrogance, as a blockish negligence
of what is revealed is a slighting ingratitude.

(2.) Submit to God in his precepts and methods. Since they are the
results of infinite wisdom, disputes against them are not tolerable. What
orders are given out by infallible wisdom are to be entertained with respect
and reverence, though the reason of them be not visible to our purblind
minds. Shall God have less respect from us than earthly princes, whose
laws we observe without being able to pierce into the exact reason of them
all ? Since we know he hath not a will without an understanding, our
observance of him must be without repining. We must not think to mend
our Creator's laws, and presume to judge and condemn his righteous
statutes. If the, flesh rise up in opposition, we must cross its motions, and
silence its murmurings. His will should be an acceptable will to us, because
it is a wise will in itself. God hath no need to impose upon us and deceive
us ; he hath just and righteous ways to attain his glory and his creatures'
good. To deceive us would be to dishonour himself and contradict his own
nature. He cannot impose false injurious precepts, or unavailable to his
subjects' happiness ; not false, because of his truth ; not injurious, because
of his goodness ; not vain, because of his wisdom. Submit, therefore, to
him in his precepts, and in his methods too. The honour of his wisdom,
and the interest of our happiness, calls for it. Had Noah disputed with
God about building an ark, and listened to the scoffs of the senseless world,
be had perished under the same fate, and lost the honour of a preacher and
worker of righteousness. Had not the Israelites been their own enemies, if
they had been permitted to be their own guides, and returned to the

96 chabnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

Egyptian bondage and furnaces, instead of a liberty and eartbly felicity in
Canaan ? Had our Saviour gratified the Jews by descending from the cross
and freeing himself from the power of his adversaries, he might have had
that faith from them which they promised him, but it had been a faith to
• no purpose, because without ground ; they might have believed him to be
the Son of God, but he could not have been the Saviour of the world. His
death, the great ground and object of faith, had been accomplished, they had
believed a God pardoning without a content to his justice, and such a faith
could not have rescued them from falling into eternal misery. The precepts
and methods of divine wisdom must be submitted to.

(3.) Submit to God in all crosses and revolutions. Infinite wisdom cannot
err in any of his paths, or step the least hair's-breadth from the way of
righteousness. There is the understanding of God in every motion ; an eye
in every wheel, the wheel that goes over us and crusheth us. We are
led by fancy more than reason. We know no more what we ask or
what is fit for us than the mother of Zebedee's children did, when she
petitioned Christ for her sons' advancement, when he came into his
temporal kingdom. Mat. xx, 22. The things we desire might pleasure
our fancy or appetite, but impair our health. One man complains for
want of children, but knows not whether they may prove comforts or
crosses ; another for want of health, but knows not whether the health of
his body may not prove the disease of his soul. We might lose in heavenly
things, if we possess in earthly things what we long for. God, in regard of
his infinite wisdom, is fitter to carve out a condition than we ourselves ; our
shallow reason and self-love would wish for those things that are injurious
to God, to ourselves, to the world, but God always chooses what is best
for his glory, and what is best for his creatures, either in regard of them-
selves, or as they stand in relation to him, or to others as parts of the
world.

We are in danger from our self-love, in no danger in complying with God's'
wisdom. When Rachel would die if she had no children, she had children,
but death with one of them. Gen. xxx. 1. Good men may conclude, that
whatsoever is done by God in them or with them is best and fittest for them,
because by the covenant [in] which makes over God to them, as their God,
the conduct of his wisdom is assured to them as well as any other attribute ;
and therefore, as God in every transaction appears as their God, so he
appears as their wise director, and by this wisdom he extracts good out of
evil, makes the afiiiction which destroys our outward comforts consume our
inward defilements, and the waves which threatened to swallow up the
vessel, to cast it upon the shore ; and when he hath occasion to manifest
his anger against his people, his wisdom directs his wrath. In judgment
he hath a work to do upon Zion, and when that work is done he ' punishes
the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria,' Isa. x. 12. As in the
answers of prayer he doth give oftentimes ' above what we ask or think,'
Eph. iii. 20, so in outward concerns he doth above what we can expect,
or by our shortsightedness conclude will be done ; let us therefore in
all things frame our minds to the divine wisdom, and say with the
psalmist, Ps. xlvii. 4, ' The Lord shall choose our inheritance ' and condi-
tion ' for us.'

6. Censure not God in any of his ways. Can we understand the full
scope of divine wisdom in creation, which is perfected before our eyes ?
Can we by a rational knowledge walk over the whole surface of the earth,
and wade through the sea ? Can we understand the nature of the heavens ?
Are all, or most, or the thousandth part of the particles of divine skill.

Rom. XVI. 27.] god's wisdom. 97

known by us, yea, or any of them thoroughly known ? How can we then
understand his deeper methods in things that are but of yesterday, that we
have not had a time to view ! We should not be too quick or too rash in
our judgments of him. The best that we attain to is but feeble conjectures
at the designs of God.

As there is something hid in whatsoever is revealed in his word, so there
is something inacessible to us in his works, as well as in his nature and
majesty. In our Saviour's act in washing his disciples' feet, he checked
Peter's contradiction : John xiii. 7, ' What I do, thou knowest not now,
but thou shalt know hereafter.' God were not infinitely wise, if the reason
of all his acts were obvious to our shallowness. He is no profound states-
man whose inward intention can be sounded by vulgar heads at the first act
he starts in his designed method. The wise God is in this like wise men,
that have not breasts like glasses of crystal, to discover all that they intend.
There are ' secrets of wisdom' above our reach, Job xi. 6 ; nay, when we
see all his acts, we cannot see all the draughts of his skill in them. An
unskilful hearer of a musical lesson may receive the melody with his ear,
and understand not the rarities of the composition as it was wrought by the
musician's mind. Under the Old Testament there was more of divine
power, and less of his wisdom apparent in his acts. As his laws, so his acts,
were more fitted to their sense. Under the New Testament, there is more
of wisdom, and less of power ; as his laws, so his acts, are more fitted to a
spiritual mind; wisdom is less discernible than power. Our wisdom there-
fore in this case, as it doth in other things, consists in silence and expecta-
tion of the end and event of a work. We owe that honour to God that we
do to men wiser than ourselves, to imagine he hath reason to do what he
doth, though our shallowness cannot comprehend it. We must suffer God
to be wiser than ourselves, and acknowledge that there is something sovereign
in his ways, not to be measured by the feeble reed of our weak understand-
ings, and therefore we should acquiesce in his proceedings ; take heed we
be not found slanderers of God, but be adorers instead of censurers, and lift
up our hands in admiration of him and his ways, instead of citing him to
answer it at our bar. Many things in the fii'st appearance may seem to be
rash and unjust, which in the issue appear comely and regular. If it had
been plainly spoke before that the Son of God should die, that a most holy
person should be crucified, it would have seemed cruel to expose a Son to
misery, unjust to inflict punishment upon one that was no criminal, to join
together exact goodness and physical evil, that the sovereign should die for
the malefactor, and the observer of the law for the idolaters* of it. But
when the whole design is unravelled, what an admirable conjunction is there
of justice and mercy, love and wisdom, which before would have appeared
absurd to the muddied reason of man !

We see the gardener pulling up some delightful flowers by the roots,
digging up the earth, overwhelming it with dung; an ignorant person would
imagine him wild, out of his wits, and charge him with spoiling his garden ;
but when the spring is arrived, the spectator will acknowledge his skill in
his former operations.

The truth is, the whole design and methods of God are not to be judged
by us in this world ; the full declaration of the whole contexture is reserved
for the other world, to make up a part of good men's happiness, in the
amazing views of divine wisdom, as well as the other perfections of his
nature. We can no more perfectly understand his wisdom, than we can his
mercy and justice, till we see the last lines of all drawn, and the full expres-
* Qu. ' violators ' ? — Ed.

VOL. II. G

98 charnock's works. [Rom. XVI. 27.

sions of them ; \ve should therefore be sober and modest in the considera-
tion of God's ways : ' His judgments are unsearchable, and his ways past
finding out.' The riches of his wisdom are past our counting, his depths
not to be fathomed, yet they are depths of righteousness and equity; though
the full manifestation of that equity, the grounds and methods of his proceed-
ings, are unknown to us. As we are too short fully to know God, so we
are too ignorant fully to comprehend the acts of God. Since he is a God
of judgment, we should wait till we see the issue of his works, Isa. xxx. 18,
and in the meantime, with the apostle in the text, give him the glory of
all, in the same expressions : ' To the only wise God be glory, through Jesus
Christ, for ever ! Amen.'

A DISCOURSE UPON THE POWER OF GOD.

Lo, these are parts of his loays : hut how little a portion is heard of him ? hut
the thunder of his power ivho can understand? — Job XXVI. 14.

BiLDAD had, in the foregoing chapter, entertained Job with a discourse of
the dominion and power of God, and the purity of his righteousness, whence
he argues an impossibility of the justification of man in his presence, who is
no better than a worm. Job in this chapter acknowledges the greatness of
God's power, and descants more largely upon it than Bildad had done, but
doth preface it with a kind of ironical speech, as if he had not acted a
friendly part, or spake little to the purpose or the matter in hand ; the sub-
ject of Job's discourse was the worldly happiness of the wicked, and the
calamities of the godly. And Bildad reads him a lecture of the extent of
God's dominion, the number of his armies, and the unspotted rectitude of his
nature, in comparison of which the purest creatures are foul and crooked. Job
therefore, from ver. 1 to ver. 4, taxeth him in a kind of scoffing manner, that
he had not touched the point, but rambled from the subject in hand, and had
not applied a salve proper to his sore : ver. 2, * How hast thou helped him
that is without power ? how savest thou the arm of him that hath no
strength ? ' &c. Your discourse is so impertinent that it will neither
strengthen a weak person nor instruct a simple one;* but since Bildad
would take up an argument of God's power, and discourse so short of it,
Job would shew that he wanted not his instructions in that kind, and that
he had more distinct conceptions of it than his antagonist had uttered ; and
therefore, from ver. 5 to the end of the chapter, he doth magnificently treat
of the power of God in several branches, and ver. 5 he begins with the
lowest.

' Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants
thereof.' You read me a lecture of the power of God in the heavenly host;
indeed, it is visible there, yet of a larger extent, and monuments of it are
found in the lower parts. What do you think of those dead things under
the earth and waters, of the corn that dies, and by the moistening influences
of the clouds springs up again with a numerous progeny and increase for the
nourishment of man ? What do you think of those varieties of metals and
minerals conceived in the bowels of the earth, those pearls and riches iu
the depths of the waters, midwifed by this power of God ? Add to these
* Miinster.

100 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

those more prodigious creatures in the sea, the inhabitants of the waters,
with their vastness and variety, which are all the births of God's power,
both in their first creation by his mighty voice, and their propagation
by his cherishing providence.

Stop not here, but consider also that his power extends to hell, either the
graves, the repositories of all the crumbled dust that hath yet been in the
world (for so hell is sometimes taken in Scripture : ver. 6, ' Hell is naked
before him, and destruction hath no covering'). The several lodgings of
deceased men are known to him ; no screen can obscure them from his
sight, nor their dissolution be any bar to his power, when the time is come
to compact those mouldered bodies to entertain again their departed souls,
either for weal or woe. The grave, or ' hell,' the place of punishment, ' is
naked before him ; ' as distinctly discerned by him as a naked body in all its
lineaments by us, or a dissected body is in all its parts by a skilful eye.
' Destruction hath no covering ; ' none can free himself from the power of
his hand. Every person in the bowels of hell, every person punished there,
is known to him, and feels the power of his wrath.

From the lower parts of the world he ascends to the consideration of the
power of God in the creation of heaven and earth : ' He stretches out the
north over the empty places,' ver. 7 ; the north, or the north pole, over the
air, which by the Greeks was called void or empty, because of the tenuity
and thinness of that element ; and he mentions here the north or north
pole for the whole heaven, because it is more known and apparent than the
southern pole.' ' And hangs the earth upon nothing ; ' the massy and weighty
earth hangs like a thick globe in the midst of a thin air, that there is as much
air on the one side of it as on the other. The heavens have no prop to sus-
tain them in their height, and the earth hath no basis to support it in its
place. The heavens are as if you saw a curtain stretched smooth in the air
without any hand to hold it, and the earth is as if you saw a ball hanging in
the air without any solid body to underprop it, or any line to hinder it
from falling, both standing monuments of the omnipotence of God.

He then takes notice of his daily power in the clouds : ' He binds up the
waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them,' ver 8. He
compacts the waters together in clouds, and keeps them by his power in the
air, against the force of their natural gravity and heaviness, till they are fit
to flow down upon the earth, and perform his pleasure in the places for
which he designs them: 'The cloud is not rent under them,' the thin air
is not split asunder by the weight of the waters contained in the cloud above
it. He causes them to distil by drops, and strains them as it were through
a thin lawn, for the refreshment of the earth ; and suffers them not to fall
in the whole lump with a violent torrent, to waste the industry of man, and
bring famine upon the world, by destroying the fruits of the earth. What
a wonder would it be to see but one entire drop of water hang itself but one
inch above the ground, unless it be a bubble, which is preserved by the air
enclosed within it ! What a wonder would it be to see a gallon of water
contained in a thin cobweb as strongly as in a vessel of brass ! Greater is
the wonder of divine power in those thin bottles of heaven, as they are
called. Job xxxviii. 37, and therefore called his clouds here, as being daily
instances of his omnipotence. That the air should sustain those rolling
vessels, as it should seem, weightier than itself ; that the force of this mass
of waters should not break so thin a prison, and hasten to its proper place,
which is below the air ; that they should be daily confined against their
natural inclination, and held by so slight a chain ; that there should be such a
gradual and successive falling of them, as if the air were pierced with holes

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 101

like a gardener's watering-pot, and not fall in one entire body to drown or
drench some parts of the earth : these are hourly miracles of divine power,
as little regarded as clearly visible.

He proceeds : ver. 9, ' He holds back the face of his throne, and spreads
the cloud upon it.' The clouds are designed as curtains to cover the
heavens, as well as vessels to water the earth, Ps. cxlvii. 8 ; as a tapestry
curtain between the heavens, the throne of God, Isa. Ixvi. 1, and the earth
his footstool. The heavens are called his throne, because his power doth
most shine forth there, and magnificently declare the glory of God ; and the
clouds are as a screen between the scorching heat of the sun, and the tender
plants of the earth, and the weak bodies of men.

From hence he descends to the sea, and considers the divine power appa-
rent in the bounding of it: ver. 10, 'He hath compassed the waters with
bounds, till the day and night come to an end.' This is several times men-
tioned in Scripture as a signal mark of divine strength, Job xxxviii. 8, Prov.
viii. 27. He hath measured a place for the sea, and struck the limits of it
as with a compass, that it might not mount above the surface of the land,
and ruin the ends of the earth's creation ; and this while day and night
have their mutual turns, till he shall make an end of time by removing the
measures of it. The bounds of the tumultuous sea are in many places as weak
as the bottles of the upper waters ; the one is contained in thin air, and the
other restrained by w^eak sands in many places, as well as by stubborn rocks
in others; that though it swells, foams, roars, and the waves encouraged and
egged on by strong winds, come like mountains against the shore, they over-
flow it not, but humble themselves when they come near to those sands
which are set as their lists and limits, and retire back to the womb that
brought them forth, as if they were ashamed, and repented of their proud
invasion. Or else it may be meant of the tides of the sea, and the stated
time God hath set for its ebbing and flowing, till day and night come to an
end;* both that the fluid waters should contain themselves within due
bounds, and keep their perpetual orderly motion, are amazing arguments of
divine power.

He passes on to the consideration of the commotions in the air and earth,
raised and stilled, by the power of God : ' The pillars of heaven tremble, and
are astonished at his reproof.' By pillars of heaven are not meant angels,
as some think, but either the air, called the pillars of heaven in regard to
place, as it continues and knits together the parts of the world, as pillars do
the upper and nether parts of a building. As the lowest parts of the earth
are called the foundations of the earth, so the lowest parts of the heaven
may be called the pillars of heaven. f Or else by that phrase may be meant
mountains, which seem at a distance to touch the sky, as pillars do the top
of a structure; and so it may be spoken according to vulgar capacity, which
imagines the heavens to be sustained by the two extreme parts of the earth
as a convex body, or to be arched by pillars ; whence the Scripture, accord-
ing to common apprehensions, mentions the ends of the earth, and the
utmost parts of the heavens, though they have properly no eiid, as being
round. The power of God is seen in those commotions in the air and earth,
by thunders, lightnings, storms, earthquakes, which rack the air, and make
the mountains and hills tremble, as servants before a frowning and rebuking
master.

And as he makes motions in the earth and air, so is his power seen in
their influences upon the sea : ' He judges the sea with his power, and hj
his understanding he smites through the proud,' ver. 12. At the creation
* Coccei in Joe. t Coccei.

102 chaenock's woeks. [Job XXVI. 14.

he put the waters into several channels, and caused the dry land to appear
barefaced for a habitation for man and beasts ; or rather, he splits the sea
by storms, as though he would make the bottom of the deep visible, and
rakes up the sands to the surface of the waters, and marshals the waves
into mountains and valleys. After that he * smites through the proud,'
that is, humbles the proud waves ; and by allaying the storm, reduceth
them to their former level. The power of God is visible as well in rebuking
as in awakening the winds; he makes them sensible of his voice, and
according to his pleasure exasperates or calms them. The striking through
the proud here is not probably meant of the destruction of the Egyptian
army ; for some guess that Job died that year,* or about the time of the
Israelites coming out of Egypt; so that this discourse here being in the
time of his affliction, could not point at that which was done after his restora-
tion to his temporal prosperity.

And now at last he sums up the power of God in the chiefest of his works
above, and the greatest wonder of his works below: ver. 13, 'By his Spirit
he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent,'
&c. The greater and lesser lights, sun, moon, and stars, the ornaments and
furniture of heaven; and the whale, a prodigious monument of God's power,
often mentioned in Scripture to this purpose, and in particular in this book
of Job, chap, xli., and called by the same name of crooked serpent, Isa.
xxvii. 1, where it is applied by way of metaphor to the king of Assyria or
Egypt, or all oppressors of the church. Various interpretations there are
of this crooked serpent : some understanding that constellation in heaven
which astronomers call the dragon, some that combination of weaker stars
which they call the galaxia, which winds about the heavens ; but it is most
probable that Job, drawing near to a conclusion of his discourse, joins the
two greatest testimonies of God's power in the world, the highest heavens
and the lowest leviathan, which is here called a bar serpent (as the word
signifies in the Hebrew), in regard of his strength and hardness, as mighty
men are called bars in Scripture : Jer. li. 30, ' Her bars are broken things.'
And in regard of this power of God in the creation of this creature, it is
particularly mentioned in the catalogue of God's works: Gen. i. 21, 'And
God created great whales,' all the other creatures being put into one sum,
and not particularly expressed.

And now he makes the use of this lecture in the text : * Lo, those are
parts of his ways ; but how little a portion is heard of him ? but the thunder
of his power who can understand ? ' This is but a small landscape of some
of his works of power, the outsides and extremities of it; more glorious
things are within his palaces. Though those things argue a stupendous
power of the Creator in his works of creation and providence, yet they are
nothing to what may be declared of his power. And what may be declared
is nothing to what may be conceived; and what may be conceived, is
nothing to what is above the conceptions of any creature. These are but
little crumbs and fragments of that infinite power which is in his nature,
like a drop in comparison of the mighty ocean; a hiss or whisper in com-
parison of a mighty voice of thunder.f This which I have spoken is but
like a spark to the fiery region, a few lines by the by, a drop of speech.

' The thunder of his power.' Some understand it of thunder literally, for
material thunder in the air. ' The thunder of his power,' that is, according
to the Hebrew dialect, 'his powerful thunder.' This is not the sense; the
nature of thunder in the air doth not so much exceed the capacity of human
understanding, it is therefore rather to be understood metaphorically. ' The
* Drusius in loc, f CEcolamp.

Job XXYI. 14.] god's pow-ek. 103

thunder of his power,' that is, the greatness and immensity of his power
manifested in the magnificent miracles of nature, in the consideration
whereof men are astonished, as if they had heard an unusual clap of
thunder. So thunder is used. Job xxxix. 25, ' The thunder of the cap-
tains,' that is, strength and force of the captains of an army. And ver. 19,
God, speaking to Job of a horse, saith, ' Hast thou clothed his neck with
thunder ? ' that is, strength. And thunder being a mark of the power of
God, some of the heathen have called God by the name of a thunderer.*
As thunder pierceth the lowest places, and alters the state of things, so doth
the power of God penetrate into all things whatsoever. ' The thunder of his
power,' that is, the greatness of his power; as 'the strength of salvation,'
Ps. XX. 6, that is, a mighty salvation.

' Who can understand ? ' Who is able to count all the monuments of his
power ? How doth this little which I have spoken of exceed the capacity
of our understanding, and is rather the matter of our astonishment than the
object of our comprehensive knowledge ? The power of the greatest poten-
tate or the mightiest creature is but of small extent ; none but have their
limits ; it may be understood how far they can act, in what sphere their
activity is bounded ; but when I have spoken all of divine power that I can,
when you have thought all that you can think of it, your souls will
prompt you to conceive something more, beyond what I have spoken and
what you have thought. His power shines in everything, and is beyond
everything. There is infinitely more power lodged in his nature, not
expressed to the world. The understanding of men and angels centered in
one creature, would fall short of the perception of the infiniteness of it.
All that can be comprehended of it are but little fringes of it, a small
portion. No man ever discoursed, or can, of God's power according to the
magnificence of it. No creature can conceive it; God himself only com-
prehends it, God himself is only able to express it. Man's power being
limited, his line is too short to measure the incomprehensible omni-
potence of God : ' The thunder of his power who can understand ? ' that is,
none can.

The text is a lofty declaration of the divine power, with a particular note
of attention, Lo !

1. In the expressions of it in the works of creation and providence : ' Lo,
these are his ways.' Ways and works excelling any created strength, refer-
ring to the little summary of them he had made before.

2. In the insufiiciency of these ways to measure his power : * but how
little a portion is heard of them ! '

3. In the incomprehensibleness of it : ' the thunder of his power who can
understand ? '

Doct. Infinite and incomprehensible power pertains to the nature of God,
and is expressed in part in his works ; or, though there be a mighty expres-
sion of divine power in his works, yet an incomprehensible power pertains
to his nature : * the thunder of his power who can understand ?'

His power glitters in all his works, as well as his wisdom : Ps. Ixii. 11,
' Twice have I heard this, that power belongs unto God.' In the law and
in the prophets, say some ; but why power twice, and not mercy, which he
speaks of in the following verse ? He had heard of power twice, from the
voice of creation and from the voice of government. Mercy was heard in

* The ancient Gauls worshipped him under the name of Taranis. The Greeks
called Jupiter BeovraTog; and Thor, whence our Thursday is derived, signifieth thun-
derer, a title the Germans gave their god; and Toran in the British language sig-
nifies thunder. — Vota. Idolo. lib, ii. cap. xxxiii. ; Camb. Britan. p. 17.

104 chaknock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

government after man's fall, not in creation ; innocent man was an object of
God's goodness, not of his mercy, till he made himself miserable. -• Power
was expressed in both ; or, ' Twice have I heard that power belongs to God,'
that is, it is a certain and undoubted truth, that power is essential to the
divine nature. It is true, mercy is essential, justice is essential ; but power
more apparently essential, because no acts of mercy, or justice, or wisdom
can be exercised by him without power. The repetition of a thing confirms
the certainty of it. Some observe that God is called Almighty seventy times
in Scripture.* Though his power be evident in all his works, yet he hath
a power beyond the expression of it in his works, which, as it is the glory of
bis nature, so it is the comfort of a believer ; to which purpose the apostle
espresseth it by an excellent periphrasis for the honour of the divine nature,
Eph. iii. 20, ' Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above
all that we can ask or think, unto him be glory in the churches.' We have
reason to acknowledge him almighty, who hath a power of acting above our
power of understanding. Who could have imagined such a powerful opera-
tion in the propagation of the gospel and the conversion of the Gentiles,
which the apostle seems to hint at in that place ? His power is expressed
by * horns in his hands,' Hab. iii. 4, because all the works of his hands are
wrought with almighty strength. Power is also used as a name of God :
Mark xiv. 62, ' The Son of man sitting on the right hand of power,' that is,
at the right hand of God. God and power are so inseparable, that they are
reciprocated. As his essence is immense, not to be confined in place ; as it
is eternal, not to be measured by time ; so it is almighty, not to be limited
in regard of action.

1. It is ingeniously illustrated by some by a unit.f All numbers depend
upon it : it makes numbers by addition, multiplies them unexpressibly ;
when one unit is removed from a number, how vastly doth it diminish it !
It gives perfection to all other numbers ; it receives perfection from none.
If you add a unit before 100, how doth it multiply it to 1100. If you set
a unit before twenty millions, it presently makes the number swell up to an
hundred and twenty millions ; and so powerful is a unit by adding it to
numbers, that it will infinitely enlarge them to such a vastness, that shall
transcend the capacity of the best arithmetician to count them. By such a
meditation as this, you may have some prospect of the power of that God
who is only unity, the beginning of all things, as a unit is the beginning of
all numbers ; and can perform as many things really as a unit can numeri-
cally, that is, can do as much in the making of creatures, as a unit can do in
the multiplying of numbers. The omnipotence of God was scarce denied by
any heathen that did not deny the being of a God, and that was Pliny, and
that upon weak arguments.

2. Indeed, we cannot have a conception of God, if we conceive him not
most powerful, as well as most wise. He is not a God that cannot do what
he will, and perform all his pleasure. If we imagine him restrained in his
power, we imagine him limited in his essence. As he hath an infinite know-
ledge to know what is possible, he cannot be without an infinite power to do
what is possible. As he hath a will to resolve what he sees good, so he
cannot want a power to effect what he sees good to decree. As the essence
of a creature cannot be conceived -without that activity that belongs to his
nature ; as when you conceive fire, you cannot conceive it without a power
of burning and warming, and when you conceive water, you cannot conceive
it without a power of moistening and cleansing : so you cannot conceive an

* Lessius, de Perfect. Divin., lib. v. cap. 1.
t Fotherby, Atlieomastic, p. 306, 307.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's powee. 105

infinite essence without an infinite power of activity. And therefore a heathen
could say, ' If you know God, you know he can do all things ; ' and therefore
saith Austin, * Give me not only a Christian, but a Jew ; not only a Jew, but
a heathen, that will deny God to be almighty.' A Jew, a heathen, may deny
Christ to be omnipotent, but no heathen will deny God to be omnipotent,
and no devil will deny either to be so. God cannot be conceived without
some power, for then he must be conceived without action. Whose, then,
are those products and eftects of power which are visible to us in the world ?
to whom do they belong ? who is the father of them ? God cannot be con-
ceived without a power suitable to his nature and essence. If we imagine
him to be of an infinite essence, we must imagine him to be of an infinite
power and strength.

In particular, I shall shew,

I. The nature of this power.

II. Eeasons to prove that God must needs be powerful.

III. How his power appears : in creation, in government, in redemption.

IV. The use.

I. What this power is ; or, the nature of it.

1. Power sometimes signifies authority, and a man is said to be mighty
and powerful in regard of his dominion, and the right he hath to command
multitudes of other persons to take his part ; but power taken for strength,
and power taken for authority, are distinct things, and may be separated
from one another. Power may be without authority, as in successful inva-
sions that have no just foundation. Authority may be without power, as in
a just prince expelled by an unjust rebellion ; the authority resides in him,
though he be overpowered, and is destitute of strength to support and exer-
cise that authority. The power of God is not to be understood of his autho-
rity and dominion, but his strength to act, and the word in the text (inni3^>
Sept. G^svog) properly signifies strength.

2. This power is divided ordinarily into absolute and ordinate. Absolute,
is that power whereby God is able to do that which he will not do, but_ is
possible to be done ; ordinate, is that power whereby God doth that which
he hath decreed to do, that is, which he hath ordained or appointed to be
exercised ;* which are not distinct powers, but one and the same power :
his ordinate power is a part of his absolute ; for if he had not a power to do
everything that he could will, he might not have a power to do everything
that he doth will.

The object of his absolute power is all things possible ; such things that
imply not a contradiction, such that are not repugnant in their own nature
to be done, and such as are not contrary to the nature and perfections of
God to be done. Those things that are repugnant in their own nature to be
done are several, as to make a thing which is past not to be past. As for
example, the world is created. God could have chose whether he would
create the world, and after it is created he hath power to dissolve it ; but
after it was created, and when it is dissolved, it will be eternally true that
the world was created, and that it was dissolved ; for it is impossible that
that which was once true should ever be false. If it be true that the world
was created, it will for ever be true that it wiis created, and cannot be other-
wise ; and also, if it be once true that God hath decreed, it is impossible
in its own nature to be true that God hath not decreed. Some things are
repugnant to the nature and perfections of God, as it is impossible for his
nature to die and perish, impossible for him, in regard of truth, to he and
* Scaliger, Publ. Exercit., 365, sec. 8.

106 chaknock's works, [Job XXVI. 14.

deceive ; but of this hereafter. Only at present to understand the object of
God's absolute power to be things possible, that is, possible in nature ; not
by any strength in themselves or of themselves, for nothing hath no strength,
and everything is nothing before it comes into being.* So God, by his abso-
lute power, might have prevented the sin of the fallen angels, and so have
preserved them in their first habitation. He might, by his absolute power,
have restrained the devil fi-om tempting of Eve, or restrained her and Adam
from swallowing the bait, and joining hands with the temptation. By his
absolute power, God might have given the reins to Peter to betray his master,
as well as to deny him, and employed Judas in the same glorious and success-
ful service wherein he employed Paul. By his absolute power, he might
have created the world millions of years before he did create it, and can
reduce it into its empty nothing this moment. This the Baptist affirms
when he tells us, that ' God is able of these stones ' (meaning the stones in
the wilderness, and not the people which came out to him out of Judea,
which were children of Abraham) ' to raise up children to Abraham,' Mat.
iii. 9, that is, there is a possibility of such a thing, there is no contradiction
in it, but that God is able to do it if he please.

But now the object of his ordinate power is all things ordained by him to
be done, all things decreed by him ; and because of the divine ordination of
things, this power is called ordinate ; and what is thus ordained by him he
cannot but do, because of his unchangeableness. Both those powers are
expressed. Mat. xxvi. 53, 54, 'My Father can send twelve legions of angels,'
there is his absolute power ; ' but how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled,
that thus it must be ? ' there is his ordinate power. As his power is free
from any act of his will, it is called absolute ; as it is joined with an act of
his will, it is called ordinate. His absolute power is necessary, and belongs
to his nature ; his ordinate power is free, and belongs to his will, a power
guided by his will : not, as I said before, that they are two distinct powers,
both belonging to his nature, but the latter is the same with the former,
only it is guided by his will and wisdom.

3. It follows, then, that the power of God is that ability and strength
whereby he can bring to pass whatsoever he please, whatsoever his infinite
wisdom can direct, and whatsoever the infinite purity of his will can resolve.
Power, in the primary notion of it, doth not signify an act, but an ability to
bring a thing into act ; it is power, as able to act before it doth actually
produce a thing. As God had an ability to create before he did create, he
had power before he acted that power without. Power notes the principle
of the action, and therefore is greater than the act itself. Power exercised
and difiused in bringing forth and nursing up its particular objects without,
is unconceivably less than that strength which is infinite in himself, the
same with his essence, and is indeed himself. By his power exercised, he
doth whatsoever he actually wills ; but by the power in his nature, he is
able to do whatsoever he is able to will. The will of creatures may be^and
is more extensive than their power, and their power more contracted and
shortened than their will ; but, as the prophet saith, ' His counsel shall
stand, and he will do all his pleasure,' Isa. xlvi, 10. His power is as great
as his will ; that is, whatsoever can fall within the verge of his will, falls
within the compass of his power. Though he will never actually will this
or that, yet supposing he should will it, he is able to perform it. So that
you must in your notion of divine power enlarge it further than to think
God can only do what he hath resolved to do ; but that he hath as infinite
a capacity of power to act as he hath an infinite capacity of will to resolve.
* Estius in Sent., lib. i. dist. 43, sec. 2.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 107

Besides, this power is of that nature, that he can do whatsoever he pleases
without difficulty, without resistance ; it cannot be checked, restrained,
frustrated.* As he can do all things possible in regard of the object, he
can do all things easily in regard of the manner of acting. What in human
artificers is knowledge, labour, industry, that in God is his will ; his will
works without labour, his works stand forth as he wills them. Hands and
arms are ascribed to him for our conceptions, because our power of acting
is distinct from our will ; but God's power of acting is not really distinct
from his will, it is sufficient to the existence of a thing that God wills it to
exist ; he can act what he will only by his will, without any instruments.
He needs no matter to work upon, because he can make something from
nothing ; all matter owes itself to his creative power. He needs no time to
work in, for he can make time when he pleases to begin to work ; he needs
no copy to work by, himself is his own pattern and copy in his works. All
created agents want matter to work upon, instruments to work with, copies
to work by, time to bring either the births of their minds or the works of
their hands to perfection ; but the power of God needs none of these things,
but is of a vast and incomprehensible nature, beyond all these. As nothing
can be done without the compass of it, so itself is without the compass of
every created understanding.

4. This power is of a distinct conception from the wisdom and will of
God. They are not really distinct, but according to our conceptions. We
cannot discourse of divine things without observing some proportion of them
with human, ascribing unto God the perfections, sifted from the imperfec-
tions of our nature. In us there are three orders, of understanding, will,
power ; and accordingly three acts, counsel, resolution, execution ; which,
though they are distinct in us, are not really distinct in God. In our con-
ceptions, the apprehension of a thing belongs to the understanding of God ;
determination, to the will of God ; direction, to the wisdom of God ; exe-
cution, to the power of God. The knowledge of God regards a thing as
possible, and as it may be done ; the wisdom of God regards a thing as fit
and convenient to be done ; the will of God resolves that it shall be done ;
the power of God is the application of his will to efiect what it hath resolved.
Wisdom is a fixing the being of things, the measures and perfections of their
several beings ; power is a conferring those perfections and beings upon
them. His power is his ability to act, and his wisdom is the director of his
action. His will orders, his wisdom guides, 'and his power effects. His will
as the spring, and his power as the worker, are expressed, Ps. cxv. 3, ' He
hath done whatsoever he pleased.' ' He commanded, and they were
created,' Ps. cxlviii. 5. And all three expressed Eph. i. 11, ' Who works
all things according to the counsel of his own will.' So that the power of
God is a perfection (as it were) subordinate to his understanding and will,
to execute the results of his wisdom and the orders of his will ; to his wis-
dom, as directing, because he works skilfully ; to his will, as moving and
applying, because he works voluntarily and freely. The exercise of his
power depends upon his will. His will is the supreme cause of everything
that stands up in time, and all things receive a being as he wills them. His
power is but will perpetually working, and diffusing itself in the season his
will hath fixed from eternity. It is his eternal will, in perpetual and suc-
cessive springs and streams in the creatures ; it is nothing else but the
constant efficacy of his omnipotent will. This must be understood of his
ordinate power. But his absolute power is larger than his resolving will ;
for though the Scripture tells us he hath done whatsoever he will, yet it tells
♦ Cra. Syntag., lib. iii. cap. xvii. p. 611.

108 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

us not that he hath done whatsoever he could. He can do things that he
will never do.

Again, his power is distinguished from his will in regard of the exercise
of it, which is after the act of his will. His will was conversant about
objects when his power was not exercised about them. Creatures were the
objects of his will from eternity, but they were not from eternity the effects
of his power. His purpose to create was from eternity, but the execution
of his purpose was in time. Now, this execution of his will we call his
ordinate power. His wisdom and his will are supposed antecedent to his
power, as the counsel and resolve, as the cause precedes the performance of
the purpose, as the effect. Some* distinguish his power from his under-
standing and will, in regard that his understanding and will are larger than
his absolute power ; for God understands sins, and wills to permit them,
but he cannot himself do any evil or unjust action, nor have a power of
doing it. But this is not to distinguish that divine power, but impotence + ;
for to be unable to do evil is the perfection of power, and to be able to do
things unjust and evil is a weakness, imperfection, and inability. Man
indeed wills many things that he is not able to perform, and understands
many things that he is not able to effect ; he understands much of the crea-
tures, something of sun, moon, and stars ; he can conceive many suns, many
moons, yet is not able to create the least atom. But there is nothing that
belongs to power but God understands and is able to effect. To sum this
up, the will of God is the root of all, the wisdom of God is the copy of all,
and the powder of God is the framer of all.

5. The power of God gives activity to all the other perfections of his
nature, and is of a larger extent and efficacy, in regard of its objects, than
some perfections of his nature. I put them both together.

(1.) It contributes life and activity to all the other perfections of his
nature. How vain would be his eternal counsels, if power did not step in
to execute them ? His mercy would be a feeble pity, if he were destitute of
power to relieve ; and his justice a slighted scare-crow, without power to
punish; his promises an empty sound, without power to accomplish them.
As holiness is the beauty, so power is the life of all his attributes in their
exercise ; and as holiness, so power is an adjunct belonging to all, a term
that may be given to all. God hath a powerful wisdom to attain his ends,
without interruption. He hath a powerful mercy to remove our miser}' ; a
powerful justice to lay all misery upon offenders ; he hath a powerful truth
to perform his promises ; an infinite power to bestow rewards and inflict
penalties. It is to this pru-pose power is first put in the two things which
the psalmist had heard : Ps. Ixii. 11, 12, ' Twice have I heard,' or * two
things have I heard ;' first power, then mercy and justice included in that
expression, ' Thou renaerest to every man according to his work.' In every
perfection of God he heard of power. This is the arm, the hand of the
Deity, which all his other attributes lay hold on, when they would appear
in their glory ; this hands them to the world, by this they act, in this they
triumph. Power framed every stage for their appearance in creation, pro-
vidence, redemption.

(2.) It is of a larger extent, in regard of its objects, than some other attri-
butes. Power doth not alway suppose an object, but constitutes an object.
It supposeth an object in the act of preservation, but it makes an object in
the act of creation ; but mercy supposeth an object miserable, yet doth not
make it so. Justice supposeth an object criminal, but doth not constitute
it so ; mercy supposeth him miserable, to relieve him. Justice supposeth
* Gamachcus. t Qu. ' ioipotence, but power ' ? — Ed.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 109

him criminal, to punish him ; but power supposeth not a thing in real
existence, but as possible ; or rather, it is from power that anything hath a
possibility, if there be no repugnancy in the nature of the thing.

Again, power extends further than either mercy or justice. Mercy hath
particular objects, which justice shall not at last be willing to punish ; and
justice hath particular objects, which mercy at last shall not be willing to
refresh ; but power doth, and alway will extend to the objects of both mercy
and justice. A creature, as a creature, is neither the object of mercy nor
justice, nor of rewarding goodness ; a creature, as innocent, is the object
of rewarding goodness ; a creature, as miserable, is the object of compas-
sionate mercy ; a creature, as criminal, is the object of revenging justice ;
but all of them the objects of power, in conjunction with those attributes of
goodness, mercy, and justice, to which they belong. All the objects that
mercy, and justice, and truth, and wisdom, exercise themselves about, have
a possibiHty and an actual being from this perfection of divine power. It
is power first frames a creature in a capacity of nature for mercy or justice,
though it doth not give an immediate qualification for the exercise of either.
Power makes man a rational creature, and so confers upon him a nature
mutable, which may be miserable by its own fault, and punishable by
God's justice, or pitiable by God's compassion, and relievable by God's
mercy ; but it doth not make him sinful, whereby he becomes miserable and
punishable.

Again, power runs through all the decrees of the states of a creature. As
a thing is possible, or may be made, it is the object of absolute power ; as it
is facdhile, or ordered to be made, it is the object of ordinate power. As a
thing is actually made, and brought into being, it is the object of preserving
power. So that power doth stretch out its arms to all the works of God,
in all their circumstances, and at all times. When mercy ceaseth to relieve
a creature, when justice ceaseth to punish a creature, power ceaseth not to
preserve a creature. The blessed in heaven, that are out of the reach of
punishing justice, are for ever maintained by power in that blessed condi-
tion ; the damned in hell, that are cast out of the bosom of entreating
mercy, are for ever sustained in those remediless torments by the arm of
power.

6. This power is originally and essentially in the nature of God, and not
distinct from his essence. It is originally and essentially in God. The
strength and power of great kings is originally in their people, and managed
and ordered by the authority of the prince for the common good. Though
a prince hath authority in his person to command, yet he hath not sufiicient
strength in his person, without the assistance of others, to make his com-
mands to be obeyed. He hath not a single strength in his own person to
conquer countries and kingdoms, and increase the number of his subjects.
He must make use of the arms of his own subjects, to overrun other places,
and yoke them under his dominion. But the power of all things that ever
were, are, or shall be, is originally and essentially in God. It is not derived
from anything without him, as the power of the greatest potentates in the
world is. Therefore, Ps. Ixii. 11, it is said, ' power belongs unto God,' that is,
solely, and to none else. He hath a power to make his subjects, and aa
many as he pleases ; to create worlds, to enjoin precepts, to execute penal-
ties, without calling in the strength of his creatures to his aid. The strength
that the subjects of a mortal prince have, is not derived to them from the
prince, though the exercise of it for this or that end is ordered and directed
by the authority of the prince. But what strength soever anything hath to
act as a means, it hath from the power of God as Creator, as well as what-

110 chaenock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

soever authority it hath to act is from God, as a rector and governor of the
world. God hath a strength to act without means, and no means can act
anything without his power and strength communicated to them. As the
clouds in the 8th verse before the text are called God's clouds, ' his clouds,'
so all the strength of creatures may be called, and truly is, God's strength
and power in them ; a drop of power shot down from heaven, originally only
in God. Creatures have but a little mite of power ; somewhat communicated
to them, somewhat kept and reserved from* them, of what they are capable
to possess. They have Hmited natures, and therefore a limited sphere of
activity. Clothes can warm us, but not feed us ; bread can nourish us, but
not clothe us. One plant hath a medicinal quality against one disease,
another against another ; but God is the possessor of universal power, the
common exchequer of this mighty treasure. He acts by creatures, as not
needing their power, but deriving power to them ; what he acts by them,
he could act himself without them ; and what they act as from themselves,
is derived to them from him through invisible channels. And hence it will
follow, that because power is essentially in God, more operations of God are
possible than are exerted.

And as power is essentially in God, so it is not distinct from his essence.
It belongs to God in regard of the unconceivable excellency and activity of
his essence. f And omnipotence is nothing but the divine essence efl&cacious
ad extra. It is his essence as operative, and the immediate principle of
operation ; as the power of enlightening in the sun, and the power of heat-
ing in the fire, are not things distinct from the nature of them ; but the
nature of the sun bringing forth light, and the nature of the fire bringing
forth heat. The power of acting is the same with the substance of God,
though the action from that power be terminated in the creature. If the
power of God were distinct from his essence, he were then compounded of
substance and power, and would not be the most simple being. As when
the understanding is informed in several parts of knowledge, it is skilled'in
the government of cities and countries, it knows this or that art, it learns
mathematics, philosophy, this or that science, the [understanding hath a
power to do this ; but this power, whereby it learns those excellent things,
and brings forth excellent births, is not a thing distinct from the under-
standing itself; we may rather call it the xmderstanding x>owerJul, than the
jioiver of the imderstandmg ; and so we may rather say God jwiverful, than
say, the x>ower of God ; because his power is not distinct from his essence.

From both these it will follow, that this omnipotence is communicable to
any creature ; no creature can inherit it, because it is a contradiction for any
creature to have the essence of God. This omnipotence is a peculiar right
of God, wherein no creature can share with him. To be omnipotent is to
be essentially God. And for a creature to be omnipotent, is for a creature
to be its own Creator. It being therefore the same with the essence of the
Godhead, it cannot be communicated to the humanity of Christ, as the
Lutherans say it is, without the communication of the essence of the God-
head ; for then the humanity of Christ would not be humanity, but deity.
If omnipotence were communicated to the humanity of Christ, the essence
of God were also communicated to his humanity, and then eternity would
be communicated. His humanity then was not given him in time, his
humanity would be uncompounded, that is, his body would be no body, his
soul no soul. Omnipotence is essentially in God ; it is not distinct from
the essence of God, it is his essence, omnipotent, able to do all things.

* Qu. ' for' ?— Ed.

t Batione summie actualitatis esaentiee.—Suarez, vol. i. p. 150, 151.

Job XXVI. 14. j god's power. Ill

7. Hence it follows that this power is infinite : Eph. i. 19, ' What is the
exceeding greatness of his power,' &c., ' according to the working of his
mighty power.' God were not omnipotent unless his power were infinite ;
for a finite power is a limited power, and a limited power cannot effect every-
thing that is possible. Nothing can be too difficult for the divine power to
effect. He hath a fulness of power, an exceeding strength, above all human
capacities ; it is a mighty power, Eph. i. 19, able to do ' above all that we
can ask or think, Eph. iii. 20. That which he acts is above the power of
any creature to act. Infinite power consists in the bringing things forth
from nothing. No creature can imitate God in this prerogative of power.
Man indeed can carve various forms, and erect various pieces of art, but
from pre-existent matter. Every artificer hath the matter brought to his
hand, he only brings it forth in a new figure. Chemists separate one thing
from another, but create nothing, but sever those things which were before
compacted and curdled together ; but when God speaks a powerful word,
nothing begins to be something. Things stand forth from the womb of
nothing, and obey his mighty command, and take what forms he is pleased
to give them. The creating one thing, though never so small and minute,
as the least fly, cannot be but by an infinite power, much less can the pro-
ducing of such variety we see in the world. His power is infinite, in regard
it cannot be resisted by anything that he hath made, nor can it be confined
by anything he can will to make. ' His greatness is unsearchable, Ps.
cxlv. 3. It is a greatness, not of quantity, but quality. The greatness of
his power hath no end. It is a vanity to imagine any limits can be affixed
to it, or that any creature can say, ' Hitherto it can go, and no further.' It
is above all conception, all inquisition of any created understanding. No
creature ever had, nor ever can have, that strength of wit and understanding
to conceive the extent of his power, and how magnificently he can work.

(1.) His essence is infinite. As in a finite subject there is a finite virtue,
so in an infinite subject there must be an infinite virtue. Where the essence
is 'jlimited, the power is so ; * where the essence is unlimited, the power
knows no bounds. f Among creatures, the more excellency of being and
form anything hath, the more activity, vigour, and power it hath to work
according to its nature. The sun hath a mighty power to warm, enlighten,
and fructify, above what the stars have, because it hath a vaster body, more
intense degrees of light, heat, and vigour. Now if you conceive the sun
made much greater than it is, it would proportionably have greater degrees
of power to heat and enlighten than it hath now ; and were it possible to
have an infinite heat and light, it would infinitely heat and enlighten other
things ; for everything is able to act according to the measures of its being.
Therefore, since the essence of God is unquestionably infinite, his power of
acting must be so also. His power (as was said before) is one and the
same with his essence. And though the knowledge of God extends to more
objects than his power, because he knows all evils of sin, which, because of
his holiness, he cannot commit ; yet it is as infinite as his knowledge, be-
cause it is as much one with his essence as his knowledgle and wisdom is.
For as the wisdom or knowledge of God is nothing but the essence of God
knowing, so the power of God is nothing but the essence of God able.

(2.) The objects of divine power are innumerable. The objects of divine
power are not essentially infinite ; and therefore we must not measure the
infiniteness of divine power by an ability to make an infinite being, because
there is an incapacity in any created thing to be infinite ; for to be a
creature and to be infinite, to be infinite and yet made, is a contradiction.

* Operationes sequuntnr essentiam. t Aquin. par. i. qu, 25, artic. 2.

112 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

To be infinite, and to be God, is one and the same thing. Nothing can be
infinite but God, nothing but God is infinite. But the power of God is
infinite, because it can produce infinite eflocts, or innumerable things, such
as surpass the arithmetic of a creature ; nor yet doth the infiniteness consist
simply in producing innumerable efi"ects, for that a finite cause can produce.
Fire can by its finite and limited heat burn numberless combustible things
and parcels, and the understanding of man hath an infinite number of
thoughts and acts of intellection, and thoughts difi'erent from one another.
Who can number the imaginations of his fancy, and thoughts of his mind,
the space of one month or year ? much less of forty or a hundred years ;
yet all these thoughts are about things that are in being, or have a founda-
tion in things that are in being. But the infiniteness of God's power con-
sists in an ability to produce infinite eff'ects, formally distinct, and diverse
from one another, such as never had being, such as the mind of man cannot
conceive : ' Able to do above what we can think,' Eph. iii, 20. And what-
soever God hath made, or is able to make, he is able to make in an infinite
manner, by calling them to stand forth from nothing. To produce innumer-
able efi"ects of distinct natures, and from so distant a term as nothing, is an
argument of infinite power.

Now, that the objects of divine power are innumerable, appears, because
God can do infinitely more than he hath done or will do. Nothing that
God hath done can enfeeble or dull his power ; there still resides in him an
ability beyond all the settled contrivances of his understanding and resolves
of his will, which no efi'ects which he hath wrought can drain and put to a
stand. As he can raise stones to be children to Abraham, Mat. iii. 9, so
with the same mighty word whereby he made one world, he can make
infinite numbers of worlds to be the monuments of his glory. After the
prophet Jeremiah, xxxii. 17, had spoke of God's power in creation, he
adds, ' And nothing is too hard for thee.' For one world that he hath
made he can create millions, for one star which he hath beautified the hea-
vens with he could have garnished it with a thousand, and multiplied, if he
had pleased, every one of those into millions ; for he can ' call things that
are not,' Rom. iv. 17; not some things, but all things possible. The barren
womb of nothing can no more resist his power now to educe a world from it
than it could at first. No doubt but for one angel which he hath made he
could make many worlds of angels. He that made one with so much ease
as by a word, cannot want power to make many more, till he wants a word.
The word that was not too weak to make one, cannot be too weak to make
multitudes. If from one man he hath, in a way of nature, multiplied so
many in all ages of the world, and covered with them the whole face of the
earth, he could in a supernatural way, by one word, multiply as many more.
It is ' the breath of the Almighty that gives life,' Job. xxsiii. 4. He can
create infinite species and kinds of creatures more than he hath created,
more variety of forms. For since there is no searching of his greatness,
there is no conceiving the numberless possible efi'ects of his power. The
understanding of man can conceive numberless things possible to be, more
than have been or shall be. And shall we imagine that a finite understand-
ing of a creature hath a greater omnipotency to conceive things possible, than
God hath to produce things possible ? When the understanding of man is
tired in its conceptions, it must still be concluded that the power of God
extends not only to what can be conceived, but infinitely beyond the measures
of a finite faculty : ' Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out : he is
excellent in power and in judgment,' Job xxxvii. 23. For the understanding
of man, in its conceptions of more kind of creatures, is limited to those

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 113

creatures which are. It cannot in its ' own imaginations conceive anything
but what hath some foundation in and from something already in being. It
may frame a new kind of creature, made up of a Hon, a horse, an ox ; but
all those parts whereof its conceptions are made have distinct beings in the
world, though not in that composition as his mind mixes and joins them.
But no question but God can create creatures that have no resemblance with
any kind of creatures yet in being. It is certain that if God only knows
those things which he hath done and will do, and not all things possible to
be done by him, his knowledge were finite ; so if he could do no more than
what he hath done, his power would be finite.

[l.J Creatures have a power to act about more objects than they do.
The understanding of man can ft-ame, from one principle of truth, many con-
clusions and inferences more than it doth. Why cannot then the power of
God frame from one first matter an infinite number of creatures more than
have been created ? The almightiness of God in producing real effects is
not inferior to the understanding of man in drawing out real truths. An
artificer that makes a watch, supposing his life and health, can make many
more of a diff"erent form and motion ; and a limner can draw many draughts,
and frame many pictures with a new variety of colours, according to the
richness of his fancy. If these can do so, that require a pre-existent
matter framed to their hands, God can much more, who can raise beautiful
structures from nothing. As long as men have matter, they can diversify
the matter, and make new figures from it ; so long as there is nothing, God
can produce out of that nothing whatsoever he pleases.

We see the same in inanimate creatures. A spark of fire hath a vas*
power in it ; it will kindle other things, increase and enlarge itself. No-
thing can be exempt from the active force of it. It will alter, by consum-
ing or refining, whatsoever you offer to it. It will reach all, and refuse
none ; and by the efficacious power of it, all those new figures which we see
in metals are brought forth. When you have exposed to it a multitude of
things, still add more, it will exert the same strength, yea, the vigour is
increased rather than diminished. The more it catcheth, the more fiercely
and irresistibly it will act ; you cannot suppose an end of its operation, or
a decrease of its strength, as long as you can conceive its duration and con-
tinuance. This must be but a weak shadow of that infinite power which is
in God. Take another instance in the sun. It hath power every year to
produce flowers and plants from the earth, and is as able to produce them
now as it was at the first lighting it and rearing it in the sphere wherein it
moves. And if there were no* kind of flowers and plants now created, the
sun hath a power residing in it, ever since its first creation, to afford the
same warmth to them for the nourishing and bringing them forth. What-
soever you can conceive the sun to be able to do in regard of plants, that
can God do in regard of worlds, produce more worlds than the sun doth
plants every year, without weariness, without languishment. The sun is
able to influence more things than it doth, and produce numberless effects ;
but it doth not do so much as it is able to do, because it wants matter to
work upon. God, therefore, who wants no matter, can do much more than
he doth ; he can either act by second causes if there were more, or make
more second causes if he pleased.

[2.] God is the most free agent. Every free agent can do more than he
will do. Man being a free creature, can do more than ordinarily he doth
will to do. God is most free, as being the spring of liberty in other crea-
tures. He acts not by a necessity of nature, as the waves of the sea, or
* Qu. 'new'?— Ed.

VOL. U. H

114 chaenock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

the motions of the wind, and therefore is not determined to those things
which he hath ah-eady called forth into the world. If God be infinitely wise
in contrivance, he could contrive more than he hath, and therefore can effect
more than he hath effected. He doth not act to the extent of his power upon
all occasions. It is according to his will that he works, Eph. i. 11. It is
not according to his work that he wills ; his work is an evidence of his will,
but not the rule of his will. His power is not the rule of his will, but his
will is the disposer of his power, according to the light of his infinite wis-
dom, and other attributes that direct his will ; and therefore his power is not
to be measured by his actual will. No doubt but he could in a moment have
produced that world which he took six days' time to frame. He could have
drowned the old world at once, without prolonging the time till the revolu-
tion of forty days. He was not limited to such a term of time by any weak-
ness, but by the determination of his own will. God doth not do the
hundred thousandth part of what he is able to do, but what is convenient to
do, according to the end which he hath proposed to himself. Jesus Christ,
as man, could have asked legions of angels ; and God, as a sovereign, could
have sent them, Mat. xxvi. 53. God could raise the dead every day if he
pleased, but he doth not. He could heal every diseased person in a moment,
but he doth not. As God can will more than he doth actually will, so he
can do more than he hath actually done. He can do whatsoever he can
will ; he can will more worlds, and therefore can create more worlds. If
God hath not ability to do more than he will do, he then can do no more than
what he actually hath done ; and then it will follow that he is not a free, but
a natural and necessary agent, which cannot be supposed of God.

(3.) This power is infinite in regard of action. As he can produce num-
berless objects above what he hath produced, so he could produce them more
magnificently than he hath made them. As he never works to the extent
of his power in regard of things, so neither in the manner of acting ; for he
never acts so, but he could act in a higher and perfecter manner.

[1.] His power is infinite in regard of the independency of action. He wants
no instrument to act. When there was nothing but God, there was no cause
of action but God. When there was nothing in being but God, there could be
no instrumental cause of the being of anything. God can perfect his action
without dependence on anything;* and to be simply independent is to be
simply infinite. In this respect it is a power incommunicable to any creature,
though you conceive a creature in higher degrees of perfection than it is. A
creature cannot cease to be dependent, but it must cease to be a creature :
to be a ci'eature and independent, are terms repugnant to one another.

[2.] But the infiniteness of divine power consists in an ability to give
higher degrees of perfection to everything which he hath made. As his
power is infinite extensive, in regard of the multitude of objects he can bring
into being, so it is infinite intensive, in regard of the manner of operation,
and the endowments he can bestow upon them.f Some things, indeed, God
doth so perfect, that higher degrees of perfection cannot be imagined to be
added to them. J As the humanity of Christ cannot be united more glo-
riously than to the person of the Son of God, a greater degree of perfection
cannot be conferred upon it ; nor can the souls of the blessed have a nobler
object of vision and fruition than God himself, the infinite being. No higher
than the enjoyment of himself can be conferred upon a creature, respectu
termini. This is not want of power. He cannot be greater because he is
greatest, nor better because he is best ; nothing can be more than infinite ;

* Suarez, de Deo, vol. i. p. 151. J Becan., Sum. Theol. p. 84.

t Becan., Sum. Tlieol. p. 82.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 115

but as to the things which God hath made in the world, he could have given
them other manner of beings than they have. A human understanding may
improve a thought or conclusion, strengthen it with more and more force
of reason, and adorn it with richer and richer elegancy of language ; why,
then, may not the divine providence produce a world more perfect and excel-
lent than this ? He that makes a plain vessel can embellish it more, engrave
more figures upon it, according to the capacity of the subject ; and cannot
God do so much more with his works ? Could not God have made this
world of a larger quantity, and the sun of a greater bulk and proportionable
strength to influence a bigger world ; so that this world would have been
to another that God might have made as a ball or a mount, this sun as a
star to another sun that he might have kindled ? He could have made every
star a sun, every spire of grass a star, every grain of dust a flower, every
soul an angel. And though the angels be perfect creatures, and inexpres-
sibly more glorious than a visible creature, yet who can imagine God so
confined that he cannot create a more excellent kind, and endow those which
he hath made with excellency of a higher rank than he invested them with
at the first moment of their creation ? Without question God might have
given the meaner creatures more excellent endowments, put them into another
order of nature for their own good, and more diffusive usefulness in the
world. What is made use of by the prophet in another case, may be used
in this, ' yet had he a residue of Spirit,' Mai. ii. 15. The capacity of every
creature might have been enlarged by God ; for no work of his in the world
doth equal his power, as nothing that he hath framed doth equal his wisdom.
The same matter which is the matter of the body of a beast, is the matter of
a plant and flower, is the matter of the body of a man, and so was capable
of a higher form and higher perfections than God hath been pleased to
bestow upon it. And he had power to bestow that perfection on one part
of matter which he denied to it, and bestowed on another part. If God can-
not make things in a greater perfection, there must be some limitation of
him. He cannot be limited by another, because nothing is superior to God.
If limited by himself, that limitation is not from a want of power, but a want
of will. He can by his own power raise stones to be children to Abraham,
Mat. iii. 9. He could alter the nature of the stones, form them into human
bodies, dignify them with rational souls, inspire those souls with such graces
that may render them the children of Abraham. But for the more fully
understanding the nature of this power, we may observe,

First, That though God can make everything with a higher degree of per-
fection, yet still within the limits of a finite being. No creature can be made
infinite, because no creature can be made God. No creature can be so im-
proved as to equal the goodness and perfection of God ;* yet there is no
creature but we may conceive a possibility of its being made more perfect in
that rank of a creature than it is ; as we may imagine a flower or plant to
have greater beauty and richer qualities imparted to it by divine power,
without rearing it so high as to the dignity of a rational or sensitive creature.
Whatsoever perfections may be added by God to a creature, are still finite
perfections ; and a multitude of finite excellencies can never amount to the
value and honour of infinite : as if you add one number to another as high
as you can, as much as a large piece of paper can contain, you can never
make the numbers really infinite, though they may be infinite in regard of
the inability of any human understanding to count them. The finite condi-
tion of the creature suffers it not to be capable of an infinite perfection. God
is so great, so excellent, that it is his perfection not to have any equal ; the
* Gamach. in Aquin., torn. i. qu. 25.

116 chaknock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

defect is in the creature, which cannot be elevated to such a pitch ; as you
can never make a gallon measure hold the quantity of a butt, or a butt the
quantity of a river, or a river the fulness of the sea.

Secondly, Though God hath a power to furnish every creature with greater
and nobler perfections than he hath bestowed upon it, yet he hath framed
all things in the perfectest manner, and most convenient to that end for
which he intended them. Everything is endowed with the best nature and
quality suitable to G-od's end in creation, though not in the best manner
for itself.* In regard of the universal end, there cannot be a better; for
God himself is the end of all things, who is the supreme goodness. Nothing
can be better than God, who could not be God if he were not superlatively
best or optimus; and he hath ordered all things for the declaration of his
goodness or justice, according to the behaviours of his creatures. Man doth
not consider what strength or power he can put forth in the means he useth
to attain such an end, but the suitableness of them to his main design, and
so fits and marshals them to his grand purpose. Had God only created
things that are most excellent, he had created only angels and men ; how,
then, would his wisdom have been conspicuous in other works, in the sub-
ordination and subserviency of them to one another ? God therefore deter-
mined his power by his wisdom ; and although his absolute power could
have made every creature better, yet his ordinate power, which in every
step was regulated by his wisdom, made everything best for his designed
intention. f A musician hath a power to wind up a string on a lute to a
higher and more perfect note in itself ; but in wisdom he will not do it,
because the intended melody should be disturbed thereby if it were not
suited to the other strings on the instrument; a discord would mar and
taint the harmony which the lutenist designed. God in creation observed
the proportions of nature ; he can make a spider as strong as a lion, but
according to the order of nature which he hath settled, it is not convenient
that a creature of so small a compass should be as strong as one of a greater
bulk. The absolute power of God could have prepared a body for Christ as
glorious as that he had after his resurrection, but that had not been agree-
able to the end designed in his humiliation ; and therefore God acted most
perfectly by his ordinate power in giving him a body that wore the livery of
our infirmities. God's power is alway regulated by his wisdom and will ;
and though it produceth not what is most perfect in itself, yet what is most
perfect and decent in relation to the end he fixed. And so in his provi-
dence, though he could rack the whole frame of nature to bring about his
ends in a more miraculous way and astonishment to mortals, yet his power
is usually and ordinarily confined by his will to act in concurrence with the
nature of the creatures, and direct them according to the laws of their
being, to such ends which he aims at in their conduct, without violencing
their nature.

Thirdly, Though God hath an absolute power to make more worlds, and
infinite numbers of other creatures, and to render every creature a higher
mark of his power, yet in regard of his decree to the contrary, he caimot
do it. He hath a physical power, but after his resolve to the contrary, not
a moral power. The exercise of his power is subordinate to his decree, but
not the essence of his power. J The decree of God takes not away any power
from God, because the power of God is his own essence, and incapable of
change, and is as great physically and essentially after his decree as it was

* Best, ex parte facientis et modi, but not ex parte rei. — Esti. in Senten. lib. i, distin.
xliv. sec. 2.

t Aquin. part i. qu. xxv. art. 6. J Gamach. in Aquin. torn. i. qu. xxv.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's powee. 117

before, only his will hath pat in a bar to the demonstration of all that power
which he is able to exercise. As a prince that can raise a hundred thou-
sand men for an invasion raises only twenty or thirty thousand, he here, by
his order, limits his power, but doth not divest himself of his authority and
power to raise the whole number of the forces of his dominions if he pleases.
The power of God hath more objects than his decree hath ; but since it is
his perfection to be immutable, and not to change his decree, he cannot
morally put forth his power upon all those objects, which, as it is essen-
tially in him, he hath ability to do. God hath decreed to save those that
believe in Christ, and to judge unbelievers to everlasting perdition.- He
cannot morally damn the first or save the latter ; yet he hath not divested
himself of his absolute power to save all or damn all. Or suppose God
hath decreed not to create more worlds than this we are now in, doth his
decree weaken his strength to create more if he pleased ? His not creating
more is not a want of strength, but a want of will ; it is an act of liberty,
not an act of impotency. As when a man solemnly resolves not to walk in
such a way, or come at such a place, his resolution deprives him not of bis
natural strength to walk thither, but fortifies his will against using his
strength in any such motion to that place. The will of God hath set
bounds to the exercise of his power, but doth not infringe that absolute
power which still resides in his nature ; he is girded with more power than
he puts forth, Ps. Ixv. 6.

(4.) As the power of God is infinite in regard of his essence, in regard of
the objects, in regard of action, so, fourthly, in regard of duration. The
apostle calls it an ' eternal power,' Kom. i. 20. His eternal power is
collected and concluded from the things that are made ; they must needs be
the product of some being which contains truly in itself all power, who
wrought them without engines, without instruments; and therefore this
power must be infinite, and possessed of an unalterable virtue of acting.
If it be eternal it must be infinite, and hath neither beginning nor end.
What is eternal hath no bounds. If it be eternal, and not limited by time,
it must be infinite, and not to be restrained by any finite object. His
power never begun to be, nor ever ceaseth to be ; it cannot languish. Men
are fain to unbend themselves, and must have some time to recruit their
tired spirits ; but the power of God is perpetually vigorous, without any
interrupting qualm : Isa. xl. 28, ' Hast thou not known, hast thou not
heard, that the everlastiag God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the
earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?' That might which suffered no
diminution from eternity, but hatched so great a world by brooding upon
nothing, will not suffer any dimness or decrease to eternity. This power
being the same with his essence, is as durable as his essence, and resides for
ever in his nature.

8. The eighth consideration, for the right understanding of this attri-
bute. The impossibility of God's doing some things, is no infringing of his
almightiness, but rather a strengthening of it. It is granted that some
things God cannot do; or rather, as Aquinas and others, it is better to say,
such things cannot be done, than to say that God cannot do them ; to
remove all kind of imputation or reflection of weakness on God,t and
because the reason of the impossibility of those things is in the nature of
the things themselves.

(1.) First, Some things are impossible in their own nature. Such are all
those things which imply a contradiction ; as for a thing to be and not to
be at the same time, for the sun to shine and not to shine at the saia^
* Crell. de Deo, cap. xxii. t Robina. Observat. p. 14.

118 chaenock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

moment of time, for a creature to act and not to act at the same instant.
One of those parts must be false ; for if it be true that the sun shines this
moment, it must be false to say it doth not shine. So it is impossible that
a rational creature can be without reason. It is a contradiction to be a
rational creature, and yet want that which is essential to a rational creature ;
so it is impossible that the will of man can be compelled, because liberty is
the essence of the will. While it is will, it cannot be constrained ; and if
it be constrained, it ceaseth to be will. God cannot at one time act as the
author of the will and the destroyer of the will.* It is impossible that vice
and virtue, light and darkness, life and death, should be the same thing.
Those things admit not of a conception in any understanding. Some things
are impossible to be done, because of the incapability of the subject; as for a
creature to be made infinite, independent, to preserve itself without the divine
concourse and assistance. So a brute cannot be taken into communion with
God, and to everlasting spiritual blessedness, because the nature of a brute
is incapable of such an elevation. A rational creature only can understand
and relish spiritual delights, and is capable to enjoy God and have com-
munion with him. Indeed, God may change the nature of a brute, and
bestow such faculties of understanding and will upon it as to render it
capable of such a blessedness ; but then it is no more a brute, but a rational
creature ; but while it remains a brute, the excellency of the nature of God
doth not admit of communion with such a subject ; so that this is not for
want of power in God, but because of a deficiency in the creature. To
suppose that God could make a contradiction true, is to make himself false,
and to do just nothing.

(2.) Some things are impossible to the nature and being of God. As to
die, implies a flat repugnance to the nature of God ; to be able to die, is to
be able to be cashiered out of being. If God were able to deprive himself
of life, he might then cease to be ; he were not then a necessary, but an
uncertain, contingent being, and could not be said ' only to have immor-
tality' as he is, 1 Tim. vi. 16. He cannot die who is life itself, and neces-
sarily existent ; he cannot grow old or decay, because he cannot be measured
by time. And this is no part of weakness, but the perfection of power. His
power is that whereby he remains for ever fixed in his own everlasting being ;
that cannot be reckoned as necessary to the omnipotence of God which
all mankind count a part of weakness in themselves. God is omnipotent,
because he is not impotent, and if he could die he would be impotent, not
omnipotent; death is the feebleness of nature. It is undoubtedly the great-
est impotence to cease to be. Who would count it a part of omnipotency
to disenable himself, and sink into nothing and not being ? The impossi-
bility for God to die is not a fit article to impeach his omnipotence. This
would be a strange way of arguing ; a thing is not powerful because it is not
feeble, and cannot cease to be powerful, for death is a cessation of all power.
God is almighty in doing what he will, not in sufi'ering what he will not.f
To die is not an active, but a passive, power; a defect of a power. God is
of too noble a nature to perish.

Some things are impossible to that eminency of nature which he hath
above all creatures ; as to walk, sleep, feed, these are imperfections belonging
to bodies and compound natures. If he could walk, he were not every-
where present. Motion speaks succession. If he could increase, he would
not have been perfect before.

(3.) Some things are impossible to the glorious perfections of God. God
cannot do anything unbecoming his holiness and goodness, anything
* Magalano, de scientia Dei, part ii. cap. vi. sec. 3. t August.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power, 119

unworthy of himself, and against the perfections of his nature. God can
do whatsoever he can will. As he doth actually do whatsoever he doth
actually will, so it is possible for him to do whatsoever it is possible for
him to will. He doth whatsoever he will, and can do whatsoever he
can will, but he cannot do what he cannot will. He cannot will any un-
righteous thing, and therefore cannot do any unrighteous thing. God
cannot love sin, this is contrary to his holiness ; he cannot violate his word,
this is a denial of his truth ; he cannot punish an innocent, this is contrary
to his goodness ; he cannot cherish an impenitent sinner, this is an injury
to his justice ; he cannot forget what is done in the world, this is a disgrace
to his^omniscience ; he cannot deceive his creature, this is contrary to his
faithfulness. None of these things can be done by him, because of the
perfection of his nature. Would it not be an imperfection in God to absolve
the guilty, and condemn the innocent ? Is it congruous to the righteous
and holy nature of God to command murder and adultery, to command
men not to worship him, but to be base and unthankful ? These things
would be against the rules of righteousness. As when we say of a good
man, he cannot rob or fight a duel, we do not mean that he wants a
courage for such an act, or that he hath not a natural strength and know-
ledge to manage his weapon as well as another, but he hath a righteous
principle strong in him which will not suffer him to do it ; his will is settled
against it. No power can pass into act unless applied by the will. But
the will of God cannot will anything but what is worthy of him, and decent
for his goodness.

[1.] The Scripture saith, it is ' impossible for God to lie,' Heb. vi. 13 ;
and God ' cannot deny himself,' 2 Tim. ii. 13, because of his faithfulness.
As he cannot die, because he is life itself; as he cannot deceive, because he
is goodness itself ; as he cannot do an unwise action, because he is wisdom
itself; so he cannot speak a false word, because he is truth itself. If he
should speak anything as true, and not know it, where is his infinite know-
ledge and comprehensiveness of understanding ? If he should speak any-
thing as ti'ue, which he knows to be false, where is his infinite righteous-
ness ? If he should deceive any creature, there is an end of his perfection,
and fidelity, and veracity. If he should be deceived himself, there is an
end of his omniscience ; we must then fancy him to be a deceitful God, an
ignorant God, that is, no God at all. If he should lie, he would be God
and no God ; God upon supposition, and no God, because not the first
truth.* All unrighteousness is weakness, not power ; it is a defection from
right reason, a deviation from moral principles and the rule of perfect
action, and ariseth from a defect of goodness and power. It is a weakness,
and not omnipotence, to lose goodness. f God is light ; it is the perfection
of light not to become darkness, and a want of power in light, if it should
become darkness. His power is infinitely strong, so is his wisdom infinitely
clear, and his will infinitely pure. Would it not be a part of weakness to
have a disorder in himself, and these perfections shock one against another ?
Since all perfections are in God in the most sovereign height of perfection,
nothing can be done by the infiniteness of one against the infiniteness of
the other. He would then be unstable in his own perfections, and depart
from the infinite rectitude of his own will, if he should do an evil action.
Again, I what is an argument of greater strength than to be utterly ignorant
of infirmity ? God is omnipotent, because he cannot do evil, and would
not be omnipotent if he could. Those things would be marks of weakness,
and not characters of majesty. Would you count a sweet fountain impotent,
* Becan. sum. Theolog. p. 83. t Maximus Tyrius. X

120 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

because it cannot send forth bitter streams ? or the sun weak, because it
cannot diffuse darkness as well as light in the air ? There is an inability
arising from weakness, and an ability* arising from perfection. It is the
perfection of angels and blessed spirits that they cannot sin ; and it would
be the imperfection of Grod if he could do evil.

[2.] Hence it follows, that it is impossible that a thing past should not
be past. If we ascribe a power to God, to make a thing that is past not to
be past, we do not truly ascribe power to him, but a weakness, for it is to
make God to lie ; as though God might not have created man, yet after he
had created Adam, though he should presently have reduced Adam to his
first nothing, yet it would be for ever true that Adam was created, and
it would for ever be false that Adam never was created. So though
God may prevent sin, yet when sin hath been committed it will alway be
true that sin was committed. It will never be true to say such a creature
that did sin, did not sin ; his sin cannot be recalled. Though God by pardon
take off the guilt of Peter's denying our Saviour, yet it^will be eternally true
that Peter did deny him. It is repugnant to the righteousness and truth of
God, to make that which was once true to become false, and not true ; that
is, to make a truth to become a lie, and a lie to become a truth.

This is well argued from Heb. vi. 18, it is ' impossible for God to lie.'
The apostle argues, that what God had promised and sworn will come to
pass, and cannot but come to pass.f Now if God could make a thing past not
to be past, this consequence would not be good, for then he might make
himself not to have promised, not to have sworn, after he hath promised and
sworn. And so if there were a power to undo that which is past, there would
be no foundation for faith, no certainty of revelation. It cannot be asserted,
that God hath created the world, that God hath sent his Son to die, that
God hath accepted his death for man. These might not be true, if it were
possible that that which hath been done might be said never to have been
done ; so that what any may imagine to be a want of power in God is the
highest perfection of God, and the greatest security to a believing creature
that hath to do with God.

(4.) Some things are impossible to be done, because of God's ordination.
Some things are impossible, not in their own nature, but in regard of the
determined will of God. So God might have destroyed the world after
Adam's fall, but it was impossible ; not that God wanted power to do it, but
because he did not only decree from eternity to create the world, but did
also decree to redeem the world by Jesus Christ, and erected the world in
order to the manifestation of his glory in Christ: Eph. i. 4, 5, the choice of
some in Christ was ' before the foundation of the world.' Supposing that
there was no hindrance in the justice of God to pardon the sin of Adam
after his fall, and to execute no punishment on him, yet in regard of God's
threatening, that in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit he should die, it
was impossible. So though it was possible that the cup should pass from
our blessed Saviour, that is, possible in its own nature, yet it was not pos-
sible in regard of the determination of God's will, since he had both
decreed and published his will to redeem man by the passion and blood
of his Son. These things God by his absolute power might have done, but
upon the account of his decree they were impossible, because it is repugnant
to the nature of God to be mutable. It is to deny his own wisdom which
contrived them, and his own will which resolved tliem, not to do that which
he had decreed to do. This would be a diffidence in his wisdom, and a
♦ Qu, ' inability ' ?— Ed.
t Becan. sum. Theol. p. 84 ; Orel, de Deo, cap. xxii.

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 121

change of his will. The impossibility of them is no result of a want of power,
no mark of an imperfection, of feebleness and impotence, but the perfection
of immutability and unchangeablenesss.

Thus have I endeavoured to give you a right notion of this excellent attri-
bute of the power of God, in as plain terms as I could, which may serve us
for a matter of meditation, admiration, fear of him, trust in him, which are
the proper uses we should make of this doctrine of divine power. The want
of a right understanding of this doctrine of the divine power hath caused
many to run into mighty absurdities ; I have therefore taken the more pains
to explain it.

II. The second thing I proposed, is the reasons to prove God to be omni-
potent. The Scripture describes God by this attribute of power : Ps. cxv. 3,
' He hath done whatsoever he pleased.' It sometimes sets forth his power
in a way of derision of those that seem to doubt of it. When Sarah doubted
of his ability to give her a child in her old age. Gen. xviii. 14, ' Is anything
too hard for the Lord ? ' They deserve to be scoffed that will despoil God
of his strength, and measure him by their shallow models. And when Moses
uttered something of unbelief of this attribute, as if God were not able to
feed 600,000 Israelites, besides women and children, which he aggravates
by a kind of imperious scoff : ' Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for
them to suffice them ? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together
for them ?' &c., Num. xi. 22, God takes him up short : ver. 28, ' Is the
Lord's hand waxed short ? ' What, can any weakness seize upon my hand ?
Can I not draw out of my own treasures what is needful for a supply ? The
hand of God is not at one time strong, and another time feeble. Hence it
is that we read of the hand and arm of God, an outstretched arm, because
the strength of a man is exerted by his hand and arm ; the power of God is
called the arm of his power, and the right hand of his strength. Sometimes,
according to the different manifestation of it, it is expressed by finger, when
a less power is evidenced ; by hand, when something greater ; by arm, when
more mighty than the former. Since God is eternal, without limits of time,
he is also almighty, without limits of strength. As he cannot be said to be
more in being now than he was before, so he is neither more nor less in
strength than he was before ; as he cannot cease to be, so he cannot cease
to be powerful, because he is eternal. His eternity and power are linked
together as equally demonstrable, Rom. i. 20. God is called the God of gods,
El Elohim, Dan. xi. 36, the Mighty of mighties, whence all mighty persons
have their activity and vigour ; he is called the Lord of Hosts, as being the
creator and conductor of the heavenly militia.

Reason 1. The power that is in creatures demonstrates a greater and an
unconceivable power in God. Nothing in the world is without a power of
activity according to its nature ; no creature but can act something. The
sun warms and enlightens everything ; it sends, its influences upon the earth,
into the bowels of the earth, into the depths of the sea ; all generations owe
themselves to its instrumental virtue. How powerful is a small seed to rise
into a mighty tree, with a lofty top and extensive branches, and send forth
other seeds, which can still multiply into numberless plants ! How wonder-
ful is the power of the Creator, who hath endowed so small a creature as a
seed with so fruitful an activity ! Yet this is but the virtue of a limited
nature. God is both the producing and preserving cause of all the virtue in
any creature, in every creature. The power of every creature belongs to him
as the fountain, and is truly his power in the creature. As he is the first
being, he is the original of all being ; as the first good, he is the spring of

122 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

all goodness ; as he is the first truth, he is the source of all truth ; so as he
is the first power, he is the fountain of all power.

1. He therefore that communicates to the creature what power it hath,
contains eminently much more power in himself: Ps. xciv. 10, 'He that
teaches man knowledge, shall not he know ?' So he that gives created beings
power, shall not he be powerful ? The first being must have as much power
as he hath given to others. He could not transfer that upon another, which
he did not transcendently possess himself. The sole cause of created power
cannot be destitute of any power in himself. We see that the power of one
creature transcends the power of another. Beasts can do the things that
plants cannot do ; besides the power of growth, they have a power of sense
and progressive motion. Men can do more than beasts ; they have rational
souls to measure the earth and heavens, and to be repositories of multitudes
of things, notions, and conclusions. We may well imagine angels to be far
superior to man. The power of the Creator must far surmount the power of
the creature, and must needs be infinite ; for if it be limited, it is limited by
himself or by some other ; if by some other, he is no longer a Creator, but
a creature ; for that which limits him in his nature did communicate that
nature to him ; not by himself, for he would not deny himself any necessary
perfection. We must still conclude a reserve of power in him, that he that
made these can make many more of the same kind.

2. All the power which is distinct in the creatures must be united in God.
One creature hath a strength to do this, another to do that ; every creature
is as a cistern filled with a particular and limited power, according to the
capacity of its nature, from this fountain ; all are distinct streams from God.
But the strength of every creature, though distinct in the rank of creatures,
is united in God the centre, whence those lines were drawn, the fountain
whence those streams were derived. If the power of one creature be admir-
able, as the power of an angel, which the psalmist saith, ' excelleth in
strength,' Ps. ciii. 20, how much greater must the power of a legion of angels
be ! How unconceivably superior the power of all those numbers of spiritual
natures, which are the excellent works of God ! Now if all this particular
power which is in every angel distinct were compacted in one angel, how
would it exceed our understanding, and be above our power to form a dis-
tinct conception of it! What is thus divided in every angel must be thought
united in the Creator of angels, and far more excellent in him. Everything
is in a more noble manner in the fountain than in the streams which distil
and descend from it. He that is the original of all those distinct powers
must be the seat of all power without distinction. In him is the union of
all without division ; what is in them as a quality is in him as an essence.
Again, if all the powers of several creatures, with all their spiritual qualities
and vigours, both of beasts, plants, and rational creatures, were united in
one subject ; as if one lion had the strength of all the lions that ever were,
or if one elephant had the strength of all the elephants that ever were, nay,
if one bee had all the power of motion and stinging that all bees ever had,
it would have a vast strength ; but if the strength of all those thus gathered
into one of every kind should be lodged in one sole creature, one man, would
it not be a strength too big for our conception ! Or suppose one cannon
had all the force of all the cannons that ever were in the world, what a
battery would it make, and, as it were, shake the whole frame of heaven and
earth ! All this strength must be much more incomprehensible in God, all is
united in him. If it were in one individual created nature, it would still be
but a finite power in a finite nature ; but in God it is infinite and immense.
^ Reason . 2. If there were not an incomprehensible power in God, he would

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 123

not be infinitely perfect God is the first being. It can only be saicl of
him, Est, he is. All other things are nothing to him, * less than nothing,
and vanity,' Isa. xl. 17, and * reputed as nothing,' Dan. iv. 35. All the
inhabitants of the earth, with all their wit and strength, are counted as if
they were not, just in comparison with him and his being as a little mote in
the sunbeams ; God therefore is a pure being. Any kind of weakness what-
soever is a defect, a degree of not being ; so far as anything wants this or
that power, it may be said not to be. Were there anything of weakness in
God, any want of strength which belonged to the perfection of a nature, it
might be said of God, He is not this or that, he wants this or that perfection
of being, and so he would not be a pure being, there would be something of
not being in him. But God being the first being, the only original being,
he is infinitely distant from not being, and therefore infinitely distant from
anything of weakness.

Again, if God can know whatsoever is possible to be done by him and
cannot do it, there would be something more in his knowledge than in his
power.-;-- What would then follow ? That the essence of God would be in
some regard greater than itself and less than itself, because his knowledge
and his power are his essence, his power as much his essence as his know-
ledge ; and therefore, in regard of his knowledge his essence would be greater,
in regard of his power his essence would be less, which is a thing impossible
to be conceived in a most perfect being. We must understand this of those
things which are properly and in their own nature subjected to the divine
knowledge, for otherwise God knows more than he can do ; for he knows
sin, but he cannot act it, because sin belongs not to power, but weakness,
and sin comes under the knowledge of God, not in itself and its own nature,
but as it is a defect from God and contrary to good, which is the proper
object of divine knowledge. He knows it also not as possible to be done by
himself, but as possible to be done by the creature. Again, if God were
not omnipotent, we might imagine something more perfect than God ; for if
we bar God from any one thing which in its own nature is possible, we may
imagine a being that can do that thing, one that is able to eff"ect it, and so
imagine an agent greater than God, a being able to do more than God is
able to do, and consequently a being more perfect than God ; but no being
more perfect than God can be imagined by any creature.f Nothing can be
called most perfect, if anything of activity be wanting to it. Active power
follows the perfection of a thing, and all things are counted more noble, by
how much more of efiicacy and virtue they possess. We count those the
best and most perfect plants that have the greatest medicinal virtue in them,
and power of working upon the body for the cure of distempers. God is
perfect of himself, and therefore most powerful of himself. If his perfection
in wisdom and goodness be unsearchable, his power, which belongs to
perfection, and without which all the other excellencies of his nature were
insignificant, and could not shew themselves (as was before evidenced), must
be unsearchable also. It is by the title of Almighty he is denominated,
when declared to be unsearchable to perfection: Job xi. 7, ' Canst thou
by searching find out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection T
This would be limited and searched out, if he were destitute of an active
ability to do whatsoever he pleased to do, whatsoever was possible to be
done. As he hath not a perfect liberty of will, if he could not will what he
pleased, so he would not have a perfect activity, if he could not do what he
willed.

Reason 3. The simplicity of God manifests it. Every substance, the more
* Victorin. in Petav. torn. i. p. 333. t Ibid. p. 233.

124 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

spiritual it is, the more powerful it is. All perfections are more united in a
Simple, than in a compounded being. Angels being spirits, are more powerful
than bodies. Where there is the greatest simplicity, there is the greatest
unity ; and where there is the greatest unity, there is the greatest power.
Where there is a composition of a faculty and a member, the member or
organ may be weakened and rendered unable to act, though the power doth
still reside in the faculty. As a man, when his arm or hand is cut off or
broke, he hath the faculty of motion still ; but he hath lost that instrument,
that part whereby he did manifest and put forth that motion ; but God being
a pure spiritual nature, hath no members, no organs to be defaced or im-
paired. All impediments of action arise either from the nature of the thing
that acts, or from something without it. There can be no hindrance to
God to do whatsoever he pleases ; not in himself, because he is the most
simple being, hath no contrariety in himself, is not composed of diverse
things. And it cannot be from anything without himself, because nothing
is equal to him, much less superior. He is the greatest, the supreme. All
things were made by him, depend upon him, nothing can disappoint his in-
tentions.

Reason 4. The miracles that have been in the world evidence the power of
God. Extraordinary productions have awakened men from their stupidity,
to the acknowledgment of the immensity of divine power. Miracles are
such effects as have been wrought without the assistance and co-operation
of natural causes, yea, contrary, and besides the ordinary course of nature,
above the reach of any created power. Miracles have been ; and saith
Bradwardine,* to deny that ever such things were, is uncivil ; it is inhuman
to deny all the histories of Jews and Christians. Whosoever denies miracles,
must deny all possibility of miracles, and so must imagine himself fully
skilled in the extent of divine power. How was the sun suspended from its
motion for some hours, Joshua x. 13 ; the dead raised from the grave ;
those reduced from the brink of it, that had been brought near to it by pre-
vailing diseases ; and this by a word speaking ! How were the famished
lions bridled from exercising their rage upon Daniel, exposed to them for a
prey, Dan. vi. 22 ; the activity of the fire curbed for the preservation of
the three children ! Dan. iii. 15. Which proves a Deity more powerful than
all creatures. No power upon earth can hinder the operation of the fire
upon combustible matter, when they are united, unless by quenching the
fire, or removing the matter. But no created power can restrain the fire, so
long as it remains so, from acting according to its nature. This was done
by God in the case of the three children, and that of the burning bush, Exod.
iii. 2. It was as much miraculous that the bush should not consume, as it
was natural that it should burn by the efficacy of the fire upon it. No ele-
ment is so obstinate and deaf, but it hears and obeys his voice, and performs
his orders, though contrary to its own nature. All the violence of the
creature is suspended as soon as it receives his command. He that gave
the original to nature, can take away the necessity of nature.f He pre-
sides over creatures, but is not confined to those laws he hath prescribed
to creatures. He framed nature, and can turn the channels of nature
according to his own pleasure. Men dig into the bowels of nature, search
into all the treasures of it, to find medicines to cure a disease, and after
all their attempts it may prove labour in vain. But God, by one act of
his will, one word of his mouth, overturns the victory of death, and
rescues from the most desperate diseases. J All the miracles which were
wrought by the apostles, either speaking some words, or touching with the

* Lib. i. cap. i. p. 38. t Damianus in Petav. % Fauch. in Acts, vol. ii. sec 56.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 125

hand, were not effected by any virtue inherent in their words, or in their
touches. For such virtue inherent in any created finite subject would be
created and finite in itself, and consequently were incapable to produce
effects, which require an infinite virtue, as miracles do, which are above the
power of nature. So when our Saviour wrought miracles, it was not by any
quality resident in his human nature, but by the sole power of his divinity.
The flesh could only do what was proper to the flesh ; but the Deity did
what was proper to the Deity. God ' alone doth wonders,' Ps. cxxxvi. 4,
excluding every other cause from producing such things. He only doth
those things which are above the power of nature, and cannot be wrought
by any natural causes whatsoever. He doth not hereby put his omnipotence
to any stress. It is as easy with him to turn nature out of its settled course,
as it was to place it in that station it holds, and appoint it that course it
runs. All the works of nature are indeed miracles, and testimonies of the
power of God producing them, and sustaining them ; but works above the
power of nature, being novelties and unusual, strike men with a greater
admiration upon their appearance, because they are not the products of
nature, but the convulsions of it.

I might also add as an ai-gument, the power of the mind of man to con-
ceive more than hath been wrought by God in the world ; and God can
w^ork whatsoever perfection the mind of man can conceive, otherwise the
reaches of a created imagination and fancy would be more extensive than
the power of God. His power, therefore, is far greater than the conception
of any intellectual creature ; else the creature would be of a greater capacity
to conceive than God is to effect. The creature would have a power of con-
ception above God's power of activity, and consequently a creature in some
respect greater than himself. Now, whatsoever a creature can conceive pos-
sible to be done, is but finite in its own nature ; and if God could not pro-
duce what being a created understanding can conceive possible to be done,
he would be less than infinite in power, nay, he could not go to the extent
of what is finite ; but I have touched this before, that God can create more
than he hath created, and in a more perfect way of being, as considered
simply in themselves.

III. The third general thing is to declare how the power of God appears
in creation, in government, in redemption.

1. In creation. With what majestic lines doth God set forth his power,
in the giving being, and endowments to all the creatures in the world, Job
xxxviii. All that is in heaven and earth is his, and shews the greatness
of his ' power, glory, victory, and majesty,' 1 Chron. xxix. 11. The heaven
being so magnificent a piece of work, is called emphatically, ' the firmament
of his power,' Ps. cl. 1 ; his power being more conspicuous and unveiled
in that glorious arch of the world. Indeed, ' God exalts by his power,' Job
xxxvi. 22, that is, exalts himself by his power in all the works of his hands ;
in the smallest shrub as well the most glorious sun. All his works of
nature are truly miracles, though we consider them not, being blinded with
too frequent and customary a sight of them ; yet in the neglect of all the rest,
the view of the heavens doth more affect us with astonishment at the might
of God's arm. These ' declare his glory, and the firmament shews his
handiwork,' Ps. xix. 1 ; and the psalmist peculiarly calls them ' his heavens,'
and ' the work of his fingers,' Ps. viii. 3. These were immediately created by
God, whereas many other things in the world were brought into being by
the power of God, yet by the means of the influence of the heavens.
^ (1.) His power is the first thing evident in the story of the creation. 'In

126 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' Gen. i. 1. There is
no appearance of anything in this declaratory preface, but of power. The
characters of wisdom march after, in the distinct formation of things, and
animating them with suitable qualities for an universal good. By heaven
and earth is meant the whole mass of the creatures : by heaven, all the airy
region, with all the host of it ; by the earth is meant all that which makes
the entire inferior globe.* The Jews observe, that in the first of Genesis,
in the whole chapter unto the finishing the work in six days, God is called
□"'n'??^, which is a name of power, and that thirty-two times in that chap-
ter; but after finishing the six days' work, he is called D^'^7^i^T, which
accordincr to their notion is a name of goodness and kindness. His power
is first visible in framing the world, before his goodness is visible in the sus-
taining and preserving it. It was by this name of Power and Almighty that
he was known in the first ages of the world, not by his name Jehovah :
Exod. vi. 3, ' And I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name
of God Almighty ; but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.'
Not but that they were acquainted with the name, but did not experience the
intent of the name, which signified his truth in the performance of his pro-
mises. They knew him by that name as promising, but they knew him not
by that name as performing. He would be known by his name Jehovah,
true to his word, when he was about to efi"ect the deliverance from Egypt ;
a type of the eternal redemption, wherein the truth of God, in performing of
his first promise, is gloriously magnified. And hence it is that God is called
Almighty more in the book of Job, than in all the Scripture besides, I think
about thirty-two times, and Jehovah but once, which is Job xii. 9, unless in
Job xxxviii., when God is introduced speaking himself, which is an argument
of Job's living before the deliverance from Egypt, when God was known more
by his works of creation, than by the performance of his promises, before
the name Jehovah was formally published. Indeed, this attribute of his
eternal power is the first thing visible and inteUigible upon the first glance of
the eye upon the creatures, Kom. i. 20. Bring a man out of the cave where
he hath been nursed, without seeing anything out of the confines of it, and
and let him lift up his eyes to the heavens, and take a prospect of that glo-
rious body the sun, then cast them down to the earth, and behold the sur-
face of it with its green clothing, the first notion which will start up in his
mind from that spring of wonders is that of power, which he will first adore
with a religious astonishment. The wisdom of God in them is not so pre-
sently apparent, till after a more exquisite consideration of his works, and
knowledge of the properties of their natures, the conveniency of their situa-
tions, and the usefulness of their functions, and the order wherein they are
linked together for the good of the universe.

(2.) By this creative power God is often distinguished from all the idols
and false gods in the world ; and by this title he sets forth himself w^hen he
would act any great and wonderful work in the world. ' He is great above all
gods ;' for ' he hath done whatsoever he pleased in heaven and in earth,'
Ps. exxxv. 5, 6. Upon this is founded all the worship he challengeth in the
world, as his pecuUar glory: Rev. iv. 11, 'Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to
receive glory, honour, and power : for thou hast created all things ;' and
Eev. X. 6. 'I have made the earth, and created man upon it : I, even my
hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded,'
Isa. xlv. 12. What is the issue ? Ver. 16, * They shall be ashamed and con-
founded, all of them, that are makers of idols.' And the weakness of idols
is expressed by this title : * The gods that have not made the heavens and
♦ Mercer, p. 7, col. 1, 2.

Job XXVI. 14.] god"s power. 127

the earth,' Jer. x. 11. ' The portion of Jacob is not like them : for he is
the former of all things,' ver. 16.

What is not that God able to do, that hath created so great a world ?
How doth the power of God appear in creation ?

[1.] In making the world of nothing. When we say the world was made
of nothing, we mean, that there was no matter existent for God to work
upon, but what he raised himself in the first act of creation. In this regard,
the power of God in creation surmounts his power in providence. Creation
supposeth nothing, providence supposeth something in being. Creation inti-
mates a creature making, providence speaks a thing already made, and capable
of government, and in government. God uses second causes to bring about
his purposes.

First, The world was made of nothing. The earth, which is described as
the first matter, ' without any form' or ornament, Gen. i. 1, 2, without any
distinction or figures, was of God's forming in the bulk, before he did adorn
it with his pencil.* God in the beginning creating the heaven and the earth,
includes two things : first, that those were created in the beginning of time,
and before all other things ; secondly, that God begun the creation of the
world from those things. Therefore, before the heavens and the earth there
was nothing absolutely created, and therefore no matter in being before
an act of creation past upon it. It could not be eternal, because nothing
can be eternal but God ; it must therefore have a beginning. If it had a
beginning from itself, then it was before it was. If it acted in the making
itself before it was made, then it had a being before it had a being ; for that
which is nothing can act nothing. The action of anything supposeth the
existence of the thing which acts. It being made, it was not before it was
made ; for to be made is to be brought into being. It was made then by
another, and that maker is God. It is necessary that the first original of
things was from nothing. When we see one thing to arise from another,
we must suppose an original of the first of each kind : as when we see a tree
spring up from a seed, we know that seed came out of the bowels of another
tree ; it had a parent, and it had a matter ; we must come to some Jirst, or
else we run into an endless maze. We must come to some first tree, some
first seed that had no cause of the same kind, no matter of it, but was mere
nothing. Creation doth suppose a production from nothing ; because,
if you suppose a thing without any real or actual existence, it is not
capable of any other production than from nothing. Nothing must be
supposed before the world, or we must suppose it eternal, and that is to
deny it to be a creature, and make it God.f The creation of spiritual sub-
stances, such as angels and souls, evince this ; those things that are purely
spiritual, and consist not of matter, cannot pretend to any original from mat-
ter, and therefore they rose up from nothing. If spiritual things arose from
nothing, much more may corporeal, because they are of a lower nature than
spiritual. And he that can create a higher nature of nothing, can create an
inferior nature of nothing. As bodily things are more imperfect than
spiritual, so their creation may be supposed easier than that of spiritual.
There was as little need of any matter to be wrought to his hands, to con-
trive into this visible fabric, as there was to erect such an excellent order as
the glorious cherubims.

Secondly, This creation of things from nothing speaks an infinite power.

The distance between nothing and being hath been alway counted so great,

that nothing but an infinite power can make such distances meet together ;

either for nothing to pass into being, or being to return to nothing. To

* Suarez, vol. iii. p. 33. t Ibid., vol. ill. p. 6.

128 chahnock's works. [Job XX^VT!. 14.

have a thing arise from nothing, was so difficult a text to those that were
ignorant of the Scripture, that they knew not how to fathom it ; and therefore
laid it down as a certain rule, that of nothing, nothing is made, which is true
of a created power, but not of an uncreated and almighty power. A greater
distance cannot be imagined than that which is between nothing and some-
thing ; that which hath no being, and that which hath ; and a greater power
cannot be imagined than that which brings something out of nothing. We
know not how to conceive a nothing, and afterwards a being from that
nothing ; but we must remain swallowed up in admiration of the cause that
gives it being, and acknowledge it to be without any bounds and measures
of greatness and power. ^= The further anything is from being, the more
immense must that power be which brings it into being. It is not conceiv-
able that the power of all the angels in one can give being to the smallest
spire of grass. To imagine, therefore, so small a thing as a bee, a fly, a
grain of corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would stupify any
creature in the consideration of it ; much more to behold the heavens with
all the troop of stars, the earth with all its embroidery, and the sea with all
her inhabitants of fish ; and man, the noblest creature of all, to arise out of
the womb of mere emptiness. Indeed, God had not acted as an almighty
Creator if he had stood in need of any materials but of his own framing. It
had been as much as his deity was worth, if he had not had all within the
compass of his own power that was necessary to operation ; if he must have
been beholden to something without himself, and above himself, for matter
to work upon. Had there been such a necessity, we could not have imagined
him to be omnipotent, and consequently not God.

Thirdhj, In this the power of God exceeds the power of all natural and
rational agents. Nature, or the order of second causes, hath a vast power.
The sun generates flies and other insects ; but of some matter, the slime of
the earth or a dunghill. The sun and the earth bring forth harvests of corn,
but from seed first sown in the earth : fruits are brought forth, but from the
sap of the plant. Were there no seed or plants in the earth, the power of
the earth would be idle, and the influence of the sun insignificant ; whatso-
ever strength either of them had in their nature must be useless without mat-
ter to work upon. All the united strength of nature cannot produce the least
thing out of nothing. It may multiply and increase things, by the power-
ful blessing God gave it at the first erecting of the world, but it cannot create.
The word which signifies creation, used in Gen. i. 1, is not ascribed to any
second cause, but only to God ; a word in that sense is incommunicable to
anything else, as the action it signifies.

Eational creatures can produce admirable pieces of art from small things,
yet still out of matter created to their hands ; excellent garments may be
woven, but from the entrails of a small silk-worm ; delightful and medicinal
spirits and essences may be extracted by ingenious chemists, but out of the
bodies of plants and minerals. No picture can be drawn without colours ;
no statue engraven without stone ; no building erected without timber,
stones, and other materials ; nor can any man raise a thought without some
matter framed to his hands, or cast into him. Matter is by nature formed
to the hands of all artificers ; they bestow a new figure upon it, by the help
of instruments, and the product of their own wit and skill, but they create
not the least particle of matter ; when they want it, they must be supplied,
or else stand still, as well as nature ; for none of them, or all together, can
make the least mite or atom ; and when they have wrought all that they
can, they will not want some to find a flaw and defect in their work. God,
* Amyrald, Morale, torn. i. p. 252.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 129

as a creator, hath the only prerogative to draw what he pleases from nothing,
without any defect, without any imperfection. He can raise what matter
he please, ennoble it with what form he pleases. Of nothing, nothing can
be made by any created agent ; but the omnipotent architect of the world
is not under the same necessity, nor is limited to the same rule, and tied by
so short a tether as created nature, or an ingenious yet feeble artificer.

[2. J It appears in raising such variety of creatures from this barren womb
of nothing, or from the matter which he first commanded to appear out of
nothing. Had there been any pre-existent matter, yet the bringing forth such
varieties and diversities of excellent creatures, some with life, some with
sense, and others with reason superadded to the rest, and those out of indis-
posed and undigested matter, would argue an infinite power resident in the
first author of this variegated fabric. From this matter he formed that glo-
rious sun, which every day displays its glory, scatters its beams, clears the
air, ripens our fruits, and maintains the propagation of creatures in the
world. From this matter he lighted those torches which he set in the heaven
to qualify the darkness of the night. From this he compacted those bodies
of light, which though they seem to us as little sparks, as if they were the
glow-worms of heaven, yet some of them exceed in greatness this globe of
the earth on which we live ; and thehighest of them hath so quick a motion,
that some tell us they run in the space of every hour forty-two milUons of
leagues. From the same matter he drew the earth on which we walk ; from
thence he extracted the flowers to adorn it, the hills to secure the valleys,
and the rocks to fortify it against the inundations of the sea. And on this
dull and sluggish element he bestowed so great a fruitfulness to maintain,
feed, and multiply so many seeds of different kinds, and conferred upon those
little bodies of seeds a power to multiply their kinds, in conjunction with the
fruitfulness of the earth, to many thousands. From this rude matter, the
slime or dust of the earth, he kneaded the body of man, and wrought so
curious a fabric, fit to entertain a soul of a heavenly extraction, formed by
the breath of God, Gen. ii. 7. He brought light out of thick darkness, and
living creatures, fish and fowl, out of inanimate waters, Gen. i. 20, and gave
a power of spontaneous motion to things arising from that matter which had
no living motion. To convert one thing into another is an evidence of infi-
nite power, as well as creating things of nothing ; for the distance between
life and not life is next to that which is between being and not being. God
first forms matter out of nothing, and then draws upon and from this indis-
posed chaos many excellent portraitures. Neither earth nor sea were capable
of producing living creatures, without an infinite power working upon it, and
bringing into it such variety and multitude of forms, and this is called by
some mediate creation ; as the producing the chaos, which was without form
and void, is called immediate creation. Is not the power of the potter
admirable in forming out of tempered clay such varieties of neat and curious
vessels, that, after they are fashioned, and passed the furnace, look as if they
were not of any kin to the matter they are formed of? And is it not the
same with the glass-maker, that from a little melted jelly of sand and ashes,
or the dust of flint, can blow up so pure a body as glass, and in such
varieties of shapes ? And is not the power of God more admirable, because
infinite in speaking out so beautiful a world out of nothing, and such
varieties of living creatures from matter utterly indisposed in its own nature
form such forms ?

[3. J And this conducts to a third thing, wherein the power of God appears,
in that he did all this with the greatest ease and facility.

First, Without instruments. As God made the world without the advice,

VOL. II. I

130 ' chaenock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

so without the assistance of any other. ' He stretched forth the heavens
alone, and spread abroad the earth by himself,' Isa. xliv. 24. He had no
engine but his word, no pattern or model but himself. What need can he
have of instruments, that is able to create what instruments he pleases ?
Where there is no resistance in the object, where no need of preparation or
instrumental advantage in the agent, there the actu^^l determination of the
will is sufficient to a reproduction. What instrument need we to the think-
ing of a thought or an act of our will ? Men indeed cannot act anything
without tools ; the best artificer must be beholden to something else for his
noblest works of art. The carpenter cannot work without his rule, and
axe, and saw, and other instruments. The watchmaker cannot act without
his file and pliers. But in creation there is nothing necessary to God's
bringing forth a world but a simple act of his will, which is both the prin-
cipal cause and instrumental. He had no scafi'olds to rear it, no engines to
polish it, no hammers or mattocks to clod and work it together. It is a
miserable error to measure the actions of an infinite cause by the imperfect
model of a finite, since by his own power and outstretched arm he made
the heaven and the earth, Jer. xxxii. 17. What excellency would God have
in his work above others, if he needed instruments, as feeble men do ?*
Every artificer is counted more admirable that can frame curious works
with the less matter, fewer tools and assistances. God uses instruments in
his works of providence, not for necessity, but for the display of his wisdom
in the management of them ; yet those instruments were originally framed
by him without instruments. Indeed, some of the Jews thought the angels
were the instruments of God in creatirig man, and that those words. Gen.
i. 26, * Let us make man in our own image,' were spoken to angels. But
certainly the Scripture, which denies God any counsellor in the model of
creation, Isa. xl. 12-14, doth not join any instrument with him in the ope-
ration, which is everywhere ascribed to himself without created assistance,
Isa. xlv. 18. It was not to angels God spake in that afi'air ; if so, man was
made after the image of angels, if they were companions with God in that
work ; but it' is everywhere said that man was made after the image of
God, Gen. i. 27. Again, the image wherein man was created was that of
dominion over the lower creatures, as appears ver. 26, which we find not
conferred upon angels ; and it is not likely that Moses should introduce the
angels as God's privy council, of whose creation he had not mentioned one
syllable. * Let us make man ' rather signifies the Trinity, and not spoken
in a royal style, as some think. Which of the Jewish kings writ in the
style we ? That was the custom of later times ; and we must not measure
the language of Scripture by the style of Europe, of a far later date than the
penning the history of the creation. If angels were his counsellors in the
creation of the material world, what instrument had he in the creation of
angels ? If his own wisdom were the director, and his own will the pro-
ducer of the one, why should we not think that he acted by his sole power
in the other ? It is concluded by most, that the power of creation cannot
be derived to any creature, it being a work of omnipotency. The drawing
something out from nothing cannot be communicated, without a communica-
tion of the Deity itself. The educing things from nothing exceeds the
capacity of any creature, and the creature is of too feeble a nature to be
elevated to so high a degree. It is very unreasonable to think that God
needed any such aid. If an instrument were necessary for God to create
the world, then he could not do it without that instrument. If he could
not, he were not then all-sufficient in himself, if he depended upon anything
* Gassend.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 131

without himself for the production or consummation of his works. And it
might be inquired how that instrument came into being. If it begun to be,
and there was a time when it was not, it must have its being from the power
of God ; and then, why could not God as well create all things without an
instrument, as create that instrument without an instrument ? For there
was no more power necessary to a producing the whole without instruments,
than to produce one creature without an instrument.

No creature can in its own nature be an instrument of creation. If any
such instrument were used by God, it must be elevated in a miraculous and
supernatural way ; and what is so an instrument, is in effect no instrument ;
for it works nothing by its own nature, but from an elevation of a superior
nature, and beyond its own nature. All the power in the instrument is
truly the power of God, and not the power of the instrument. And there-
fore what God doth by an instrument he could do as well without. If you
should see one apply a straw to iron for the cutting of it, and effect it, you
would not call the straw an instrument in that action, because there was
nothing in the nature of the straw to do it. It was done wholly by some
other force, which might have done it as well without the straw as with it.
The narrative of the creation in Genesis removes any instrument from God.
The plants which are preserved and propagated by the influence of the sun
were created the day before the sun, viz., on the third day, whereas the
light was collected into the body of the sun on the fourth day. Gen. i. 11, 16,
to shew, that though the plants do instrumentally owe their yearly beauty
and preservation to the sun, yet they did not in any manner owe their crea-
tion to the instrumental heat and vigour of it.

Secondly, God created the world by a word, by a simple act of his will.
The whole creation is wrought by a word : ' God said. Let there be light ; '
and ' God said. Let there be a firmament,' Gen. i. ;3, 5, &c., throughout
the whole chapter. Not that we should understand it of a sensible word,
but to express the easiness of this operation of God, as easy as a word to
man. We must understand it of a powerful order of his own will, which is
expressed by the Psalmist in the nature of a command : Ps. xxxiii. 6, ' He
spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast; ' and Ps. cxlviii. 5,
' He commanded, and they were created.' At the same instant that he
willed them to stand forth, they did stand forth. The efficacious com-
mand of the Creator was the original of all things ; the insensibility of
nothing obeyed the act of his will. Creation is therefore entitled a calHng :
Rom. iv. 17, ' He calls those things which are not as if they were.' To
create is no more with God than to call ; and what he calls presents itself
before him in the same posture that he calls it. He did with more ease
make a world than we can form a thought. It is the same ease to him to
create worlds as to decree them. There needs no more than a resolve to
have things wrought at such a time, and they will be, according to his plea-
sure. This will is his power. 'Let there be light' is the precept of his
will, and ' there was light ' is the effect of his precept. By a word was the
matter of the heavens and the earth framed ; by a word things separate
themselves from the rude mass into then: proper forms ; by a word light
associates itself into one body and forms a sun ; by a word are the heavens,
as it were, bespangled with stars, and the earth dressed with flowers ; by a
word is the world both ceiled and floored. One act of his will formed the
world and perfected its beauty. All the variety and several exploits of his
power were not caused by distinct words or acts of power. God uttered not
distinct words for distinct species, as, let there be an elephant, and let
there be a lion; but as he produced those various creatures out of one

132 chabnock's woeks. [Job XXVI. 14.

matter, so by one word. By one single command, those varieties of crea-
tures, with their clothing, ornaments, distinct notes, qualities, functions,
were brought forth. By one word all the seeds of the earth, wdth their
various virtues ; by one word, all the fish of the sea, and fowls of the air in
their distinct natures, instincts, colours ; by one word all the beasts of the
field, with their varieties, Gen. i. 11, 20, 24. Heaven and earth, spiritual and
corporeal creatures, mortal and immortal, the greater and the less, visible
and invisible, were formed with the same ease. A word made the least, and
a word made the greatest.* It is as little difficulty to him to produce the
highest angel as the lightest atom. It is enough for the existence of the
stateliest cherubim for God only to will his being ; it was enough for the
forming and fixing the sun to will the compacting of light into one body.
The creation of the soul of man is expressed by inspiration. Gen. ii. 7, to
shew that it is as easy with God to create a rational soul as for man to
breathe. f Breathing is natural to man by a communication of God's good-
ness ; and the creation of the soul is as easy to God by virtue of his
almighty word. As there was no proportion between nothing and being, so
there was as little proportion between a word and such glorious effects. A
mere voice, coming from an omnipotent will, was capable to produce such
varieties, which angels and men have seen in all ages of the world, and this
without weariness. What labour is there in willing, what pain could there
be in speaking a word ? Isa. xl. 28, ' The Creator of the ends of the earth
is not weary.' And though he be said to rest after the creation, it is to be
meant a rest from work, not a repose from weariness. So great is the power
of God, that without any matter, without any instruments, he could create
many worlds, and with the same ease as he made this.

[4.] I might add also, the appearance of this power in the instantaneous
production of things. The ending of his word was not only the beginning, but
the perfection of everything he spake into being ; not several words to
several parts and members, but one word, one breath of his mouth, one act
of his will to the whole species of the creatures, and to every member of
each individual. Heaven and earth were created in a moment, six days
went to their disposal, and that comely order we obsei-ve in the world was
the work of a week ; the matter was formed as soon as God had spoken the
word, and in every part of the creation, as soon as God spake the word,
* Let it be so,' the answer immediately is, ' It was so,' which notes the
present standing up of the creature according to the act of his will. And
therefore, J one observes, that Let there be Ught, and there ivas light, in the
Hebrew are the same words, without any alteration of letter or point, only
the conjunctive particle added, ■^^^i \'T"1 "I'lJiJ *'n\ Let there be light, and
let there be light, to shew that the same instant of the speaking of the divine
word was the appearance of the creature, so great was the authority of his will.

2. We are to shew God's power in the government of the world. As
God decreed from eternity the creation of things in time, so he decreed
from eternity the particular ends of creatures, and their operations respect-
ing those ends. Now as there was need of his power to execute his
decree of creation, there is also need of his power to execute his decree
about the manner of government. AU government is an act of the under-
standing, will, and power.§ Prudence to design belongs to the understand-
ing, the election of the means belongs to the will, and the accomplishment
of the whole is an act of power. It is a hard matter to determine which is
most necessary. Wisdom stands in as much need of power to perfect, as
power doth of wisdom, to model and draw out a scheme ; though wisdom
* August, t Theodoret. t Pears., p. 111. § Suarez., vol. i. lib. iii. cap x.

Job XXYI. 14.] god's powee. 133

directs, power must eflfect. Wisdom and power are distinct things among
men. A poor man in a cottage may have more prudence to advise than a
privy councillor, and a prince more power to act than wisdom to conduct.
A pilot may direct, though he be lame, and cannot climb the masts and
spread the sails. But God is wanting in nothing ; neither in wisdom to
design, nor in will to determine, nor in power to accomplish. His wisdom
is not feeble, nor his power foolish. A powerful wisdom could not act what
it would, and a foolish power would act more than it should. The power
expressed in his government is shadowed forth in the living creatures,
which are God's instruments in it. It is said, Ezek. i. 10, ' Every one of
them had four faces : ' that of a man to signify wisdom ; of a lion, eagle, the
strongest among birds, to signify their corn-age and strength to perform their
offices.

This power is evident in the natural, moral, gracious government.

There is a natural providence, which consists in the preservation of all
things, propagation of them by corruptions and generations, and in a co-opera-
tion with them in their motions to attain their ends.

Moral government is of the hearts and actions of men.

Gracious government, as respecting the church.
■ (1.) His power is evident in natural government.

[1.] In preservation. God is the great Father of the world, to nourish
it as well as create it.* Man and beast would perish if there were not
herbs for their food, and herbs would wither and perish if the earth were not
watered with fruitful showers. This some of the heathens acknowledged in
their worshipping God under the image of an ox, a useful creature, by reason of
its strength, to which we owe so much of our food in corn. Hence God is
styled the ' preserver of man and beast,' Ps. xxxvi. 6. Hence the Jews
called God j^lace, D")pQ, because he is the subsistence of all things. By the
same word whereby he gave being to things, he gives to them continuance
and duration in being to such a term of time. As they were created by his
word, they are supported by his word, Heb. i. 3. The same powerful /af,
Gen. i. 11, ' Let the earth bring forth grass,' when the plants peeped upon
manf out of nothing, is expressed every spring, when they begin to lift up
their heads from their naked roots and winter graves. The resurrection of
light every morning, the reviving the pleasure of all things to the eye, the
watering the valleys from the mountain springs, the curbing the natural
appetite of the waters from covering the earth, every draught that the beasts
drink, every lodging the fowls have, every bit of food for the sustenance of
man and beast, is ascribed to the ' opening of his hand,' the diffusing of his
power, Ps. civ. 27, &c., as much as the first creation of things, and endowing
them with their particular nature ; whence the plants which are so serviceable
are called, ver. 16, the ' trees of the Lord,' of Jehovah, that hath only being
and power in himself. The whole psalm is but the description of his preserving,
as the first of Genesis is of his creating power. It is by this power angels
have so many thousand years remained in the power of understanding and
willing. By this power things distant in their natures ^have been joined
together, a spiritual soul and a dusty body knit in a marriage knot ; by
this power the heavenly bodies have for so many ages rolled in their spheres,
and the tumultuous elements have persisted in their order; by this hath the
matter of the world been to this day continued, and as capable of entertain-
ing forms as it was at the first creation. What an amazing sight would it
be to see a man hold a pillar of the exchange upon one of his fingers !
What is this to the power of God, who ' holds the waters in the hollow of
* Daille in 1 Cor. x. p. 102. t Qu. ' tho earth ' ?— Ed

134 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

his hands, metes out the heaven •with a span, and weighs the mountains in
scales, and the hills in a balance' ? Isa. xl. 12.

The preserving the earth from the violence of the sea is a plain instance
of this power.* How is that raging element kept pent withing those lists
where he first lodged it, continuing its course in its channel without over-
flowing the earth, and dashing in pieces the lower part of the creation !
The natural situation of the water is to be above the earth, because it is
lighter, and to be immediately under the air, because it is heavier than that
thinner element. Who restrains this natural quality of it, but that God
that first formed it ? The word of command at first, ' Hitherto shalt thou
go, and no further,' keeps those waters linked together in their den, that
they may not ravage the earth, but be useful to the inhabitants of it. And
when once it finds a gap to enter, what power of earth can hinder its passage ?
How fruitless sometimes is all the art of man to send it to its proper channel,
when once it hath spread its mighty waves over some countries, and trampled
part of the inhabited earth under its feet ! It hath triumphed in its victory,
and withstood all the power of man to conquer its force. It is only the
power of God that doth bridle it from spreading itself over the whole earth.
And that his power might be more manifest, he hath set but a weak and
small bank against it. Though he hath bounded it in some places by mighty
rocks, which lift up their heads above it, yet in most places by feeble sand.
How often is it seen in every stormy motion, when the waves boil high, and
roll furiously, as if they would swallow up all the neighbouring houses upon
the shore; when they come to touch those sandy limits they bow their heads,
fall flat, and sink into the lap whence they were raised, and seem to foam
with anger that they can march no further, but must spit themselves at so
weak an obstacle ! Can the sand be thought to be the cause of this ? The
weakness of it gives no footing to such a thought. Who can apprehend
that an enraged army should retire upon the opposition of a straw in an
infant's hand? Is it the nature of the water? Its retirement is against
the natural quality of it ; pour but a little upon the ground, and you always
see it spread itself. No cause can be rendered in nature ; it is a standing
monument of the power of God in the preservation of the world, and ought
to be more taken notice of by us in this island, surrounded with it, than by
some other countries in the world.

First, We find nothing hath power to preserve itself. Doth not every
creature upon earth require the assistance of some other for its maintenance?
' Can the rush grow up without mire ; can the flag grow up without water ? '
Job viii. 11. Can man or beast maintain itself without grain from the
bowels of the earth ? Would not every man tumble into the grave without
the aid of other creatures to nourish him ? Whence do these creatures
receive that virtue of supplying him nourishment, but from the sun and
earth, and whence do they derive that virtue, but from the Creator of all
things ? And should he but slack his hand, how soon would they and all
their qualities perish, and the lines of the world fall in pieces, and dash one
another into their first chaos and confusion ! All creatures indeed have an
appetite to preserve themselves, they have some knowledge of the outward
means for their preservation, so have irrational animals a natural instinct,
as well as men have some skill to avoid things that are hurtful, and apply
things that are helpful. But what thing in the world can preserve itself by
an inward influx into its own being ? All things want such a power without
GoA's Jiat, ' Let it be so.' Nothing but is destitute of such a power for its
own preservation, as much as it is of a power for its own creation. Were
* Daille, Melange, part ii. p. 457, &c.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 185

there any true power for such a work, what need of so many external helps
from things of an inferior nature to that which is preserved by them ?

: No created thing hath a power to preserve any decayed being. Who can
lay claim to such a virtue as to recall a withering flower to its former
beauty, to raise the head of a drooping plant, or put life into a gasping
worm when it is expiring, or put impaired vitals into their former posture ?
Not a man upon earth, nor an angel in heaven, can pretend to such a virtue;
they may be spectators, but not assisters, and are in this case physicians of
no value.

Secondly, It is therefore the same power preserves things, which at first
created them. The creature doth as much depend upon God in the first
instant of its being for its preservation, as it did, when it was nothing,
for its production and creation into being. As the continuance of a thought
of our mind depends upon the power of our mind, as well as the first
framing of that thought.* There is as little difference between creating
and preserving power, as there is between the power of mine eye to begin
an act of vision and continue that act of vision, as to cast my eye upon an
object, and continue it upon that object. As the first act is caused by the
eye, so the duration *of that act is preserved by the eye; shut the eye, and
the act of vision perishes ; divert the eye from that object, and that act of
vision is exchanged for another. And therefore the preservation of things
is commonly called a continual- creation. And certainly it is no less, if we
understand it of a preservation by an inward influence into the being of
things. It is one and the same action invariably continued, and obtaining
its force every moment. f The same action whereby he created them of
nothing, and which every moment hath a virtue to produce a thing out of
nothing, if it were not yet extant in the world, it remains the same without
any diminution throughout the whole time wherein anything doth remain
in the world. For all things would return to nothing if God did not keep
them up in the elevation and state to which he at first raised them by bis
creative power : Acts xvii. 28, ' In him we live and have our being ;' by
him, or by the same power whence we derived our being, are our lives
maintained. As it was his almighty power whereby we were after we had
been nothing, so it is the same power whereby we now are after he hath
made us something.

Certainly all things have no less a dependence on God than light upon the
sun, which vanisheth and hides its head upon the withdrawing of the sun.
And should God suspend that powerful word whereby he erected the frame
of the world, it would sink down to what it was before he commanded it to
stand up. There needs no new act of power to reduce things to nothing,
but the cessation of that omnipotent influx. When the appointed time set
them for their being comes to a period, they faint and bend down their
heads to their dissolution ; they return to their elements, and perish : Ps.
civ. 29, ' Thou hidest thy face, and they are troubled : thou takest away
their breath, they die, and return to their dust.' That which was
nothing cannot remain on this side nothing, but by the same power that
first called it out of nothing. As when God withdrew his concurring power
from the fire, its quality ceased to act upon the three children, so if he
withdraws his sustaining power from the creature, its nature will cease to be.
[2.] It appears in propagation. That powerful word, ' Increase and mul-
tiply,' Gen. i. 22, 23, pronounced at the first creation, hath spread itself
over every part of the world, every animal in the world, in the formation cf
every one of them. From two of a kind, how great a number of individuals
* Lessius, de Perfect. Divin. p. 69. t Lessius, de Sum. Bon. p. 580-582.

136 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

and single creatures have been multiplied to cover the face of the earth in
their continued successions ! What a world of plants spring up from the
vfomh of a dry earth, moistened by the influence of a cloud, and hatched by
the beams of the sun ! How admirable an instance of his propagating
power is it, that from a little seed a massy root should strike into the
bowels of the earth, a tall body and thick branches, with leaves and flowers
of various colours, should break through the surface of the earth, and mount
up towards heaven, when in the seed you neither smell the scent, nor see
any firmness of a tree, nor behold any of those colours which you view in
the flowers that the years produce, a power not to be imitated by any crea-
ture ! How astonishing is it that a small seed, whereof many will not
amount to the weight of a grain, should spread itself into leaves, bark, fruit
of a vast weight, and multiply itself into millions of seeds ! What power is
that, that from one man and woman hath multiplied families, and from
families stocked the world with people ! Consider the living creatures, as
formed in the womb of their several kinds, every one is a wonder of power.
The psalmist instanceth in the forming and propagation of man : Ps.
cxxxix. 14, * I am fearfully and wonderfully made : .marvellous are thy
works.' The forming of the parts distinctly in the womb, and bringing
forth into the world every particular member, is a roll of wonders, of power.
That so fine a structure as the body of man should be polished ' in the lower
parts of the earth,' as he calls the womb, ver. 15, in so short a time, with
members of a various form and usefulness, each labouring in their several
functions ! Can any man give an exact account of the manner ' how the
bones do grow in the womb' ? Eccles. xi. 5. It is unknown to the father,
and no less hid from the mother, and the wisest men cannot search out the
depths of it. It is one of the secret works of an omnipotent power ; secret
in the manner, though open in the efiect. So that we must ascribe it to
God, as Job doth: * Thine hands have made me, and fashioned me together
round about,' Job x. 8 ; thy hands, which formed heaven, have formed
every part, every member, and wrought me like a mighty workman. The
heavens are said to be the work of God's hands, and man is here said to be
no less. The forming and propagation of man from that earthly matter is
no less a wonder of power than the structure of the world from a rude and
indisposed matter. A heathen philosopher descants elegantly upon it : ' Dost
thou understand (my son) the forming of man in the womb ? Who erected
that noble fabric ; who carved the eyes, the crystal windows of light, and
the conductors of the body ; who bored the nostrils and ears, those loop-
holes of scents and sounds; who stretched out and knit the sinews and
ligaments for the fastening of every member ; who cast the hollow veins,
the channels of blood ; set and strengthened the bones, the pillars and
rafters of the body ; who digged the pores, the sinks to expel the filth ;
who made the heart, the repository of the soul, and formed the lungs like a
pipe ? What mother, what father, wrought these things ? No, none but
the almighty God, who made all things according to his pleasure. It is he
who pi'opagates this noble piece from a pile of dust. Who is born by his
own advice ; who gives stature, features, sense, wit, strength, speech, but
God?'*

It is no less a wonder that a little infant can live so long in a dark sink,
in the midst of filth without breathing ; and the eduction of it out of the
womb is no less a wonder than the forming, increase, nourishment of it in
that cell ; a wonder that the life of the infant is not the death of the
mother, or the life of the mother the death of the infant. This little crea-
* Trismegist. in Serm. Greek in the Temple, p. 57.

Job XXVI. 14. J god's power. 137

ture, when it springs up from such small beginnings by the power of God,
grows up to be one of the lords of the world, to have dominion over the
creatures, and propagates its kind in the same manner. AU this is un-
accountable without having recourse to the power of God in the government
of the creatures.

And to add to this wonder, consider also what multitudes of formations
and births there are at one time all over the world, in every part of which
the finger of God is at work ; and it will speak an unwearied power. It is
admirable in one man, more in a town of men ; still more in a greater and
larger kingdom, a vaster world. There is a birth for every hour in this
city, were but one hundred and sixty-eight born in a week, though the
weekly bills mention more. What is this city to three kingdoms, what
three kingdoms to a populous world ? Eleven* thousand and eighty will
make one for every minute in the week ; what is this to the weekly propa-
gation in all the nations of the universe, besides the generation of all the
living creatures in that space, which are the 'works of God's fingers' as
well as man ? What will be the result of this but the notion of an uncon-
ceivable, unwearied almightiness, alway active, alway operating ?

[3.] It appears in the motions of all creatures. All things ' live and
move in him,' Acts xvii. 28, by the same power that creatures have their
beings, they have their motions. They have not only a being by his power-
ful command, but they have their minutely motion by his powerful concur-
rence. Nothing can act without the almighty influx of God, no more than
it can exist without the creative word of God. It is true indeed the order-
ing of all motions to his holy ends is an act of wisdom, but the motion itself
whereby those ends are attained is a work of his power.

First, God as the first cause hath an influence into the motions of all
second causes. As all the wheels in a clock are moved in their difierent
motions by the force and strength of the principal and primary wheel, if
there be any defect in that, or if that stand still, all the rest languish and
stand still the same moment. All creatures are his instruments, his
engines, and have no spirit but what he gives and what he assists. What-
soever nature works, God works in nature ; nature is the instrument, God
is the supporter, director, mover of nature ; that what the prophet saith
in another case may be the language of universal nature, ' Lord, thou
hast wrought all our works in us,' Isa. xxvi. 12. They are our works sub-
jectively, efficiently, as second causes; GocVs wovks originally, concurrently.
The sun moved not in the valley of Ajalon for the space of many hours in
the time of Joshua, chap. x. 13; nor did the fire exercise its consuming
quality upon the three children in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, Dan. iii. 25.
He withdrew not his supporting power from their being, for then they had
vanished ; but his influencing power from their qualities, whereby their
motion ceased, till he returned his influential concui-rence to them ; which
evidenceth, that without a perpetual derivation of divine power the sun
could not run one stride or inch of its race, nor the fire devour one grain of
light chafi" or an inch of straw. Nothing without his sustaining power can
continue in being, nothing without his co-working power can exercise one
mite of those qualities it is possessed of. All creatures are wound up by him,
and his hand is constantly upon them, to keep them in perpetual motion.

Secondly, Consider the variety of motions in a single creature. How

many motions are there in the vital parts of a man, or in any other animal

which a man knows not, and is unable to number ? The renewed motion

of the lungs, the systoles and diastoles of the heart, the contractions and

♦ 'Ten.'— Ed.

138 ' chaknock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

dilatations of the heart, whereby it spouts out and takes in blood, the power
of concoction in the stomach, the motion of the blood in the veins, &c., all
which were not only settled by the powerful hand of God, but are upheld
by the same, preserved and influenced in every distinct motion by that power
that stamped them with that nature. To every one of those there is not
only the sustaining power of God holding up their natures, but the motive
power of Gcd concurring to every motion ; for, if we move in him as well
as we live in him, then every particle of our motion is exercised by his
concurring power, as well as every moment of our life supported by his
preserving power. What an infinite variety of motions is there in the whole
world, in universal nature, to all which God concurs, all which he conducts,
even the motions of the meanest as well as the greatest creatures, which
demonstrate the indefatigable power of the governor. It is an infinite power
which doth act in so many varieties, whereby the soul forms every thought,
the tongue speaks every word, the body exerts every action. What an in-
finite power is that which presides over the birth of all things, concurs
with the motion of the sap in the tree, rivers on the earth, clouds in the
air, every drop of rain, fleece of snow, crack of thunder ? Not the least
motion in the world, but is under an actual influence of this almighty mover.

And lest any should scruple the concurrence of God to so many varieties
of the creatures' motion as a thing utterly inconceivable, let them consider the
sun, a natural image and shadow of the perfections of God. Doth not the
power of that finite creature extend itself to various objects at the same
moment of time ? How many inse2ts doth it animate, as flies, &c., at the
same moment throughout the world ! How many several plants doth it
erect at its appearance in the spring, whose roots lay mourning in the earth
all the foregoing winter ! What multitudes of spires of grass, and nobler
flowers, doth it midwife in the same hour ! It warms the air, melts the
blood, cherishes living creatures of various kinds in distinct places, without
tiring ; and shall the God of this sun be less than his creature ?

Thirdly, And since I speak of the sun, consider the power of God in the
motion of it. The vastness of the sun is computed to be at the least 166
times bigger than the earth,* and its distance from the earth some tell us to
be about four miUions of miles,t whence it follows, that it is whirled about
the world with that swiftness, that in the space of an hour it runs a million
of miles, which is as much as if it should move round about the surface of
the earth fifty times in one hour, which vastness exceeds the swiftness of a
bullet shot out of a cannon, which is computed to fly not above three miles
in a minute, so that the sun runs further in one hour's space, than a bullet
can in five thousand if it were kept in motion ; so that if it were near the
earth, the swiftness of its motion would shatter the whole frame of the
world, and dash it in pieces : so that the psalmist may well say : ' It runs a
race like a strong man,' Ps. xix. 5. What an incomprehensible power is
that which hath communicated such a strength and swiftness to the sun,
and doth daily influence its motion, especially since after all those years of
its motion, wherein one would think it should have spent itself, we behold
it every day as vigorous as Adam did in paradise, without limping, without
shattering itself, or losing any thing of its natural spirits in its unwearied
motion. How great must that power be, which hath kept this great body
so entire, and thus swiftly moves it every day !

Is it not now an argument of omnipotency to keep all the strings of nature

* A Lapide, in i. cap. Gen. 16. Lessius, de perfect, divin. p. 90, 91. Lessius, de
Providen. p. 633. Voss. de Idol, lib. ii. cap. ii.
t In reality nearly 96,000,000.— Ed.

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 139

in tune ; to wind them up to a due pitch for the harmony he intended by
them ; to keep things that are contrary from that confusion they would
naturally fall into ; to prevent those jarrings which would naturally result
from their various and snarling qualities ; to preserve every being in its
true nature ; to propagate every kind of creature ; order all the operations,
even the meanest of them, when there are such innumerable varieties ?

But let us consider, that this power of preserving things in their station
and motion, and the renewing of them, is more stupendous than that which
we commonly call miraculous.

We call those miracles which are wrought out of the track of nature, and
contrary to the usual stream and current of it, which men wonder at, because
they seldom see them and hear of them, as things rarely brought forth in the
world, when, the truth is, there is more of power expressed in the ordinary
station and motion of natural causes, than in those extraordinary exertings of
power. Is not more power signalised in that whirling motion of the sun every
hour for so many ages, than in the suspending of its motion one day, as it was
in the days of Joshua ? That fire should continually ravage and consume,
and greedily swallow up every thing that is offered to it, seems to be the
effect of as admirable a power as the stopping of its appetite a few moments,
as in the case of the three children. Is not the rising of some small seeds from
the ground, with a multiplication of their numerous posterity, an effect of
as great a power as our Saviour's feeding many thousands with a few loaves
by a secret augmentation of them ?* Is not the chemical producing so
pleasant and delicious a fruit as the grape from a dry earth, insipid rain, and
a sour vine, as admirable a token of divine power as our Saviour's turn-
ing water into wine ? Is not the cure of diseases by the application of a
simple inconsiderable weed, or a slight infusion, as wonderful in itself as the
cure of it by a powerful word ? What if it be naturally designed to heal ;
what is that nature, who gave that nature, who maintains that nature, who
conducts it, co-operates with it ? Doth it work of itself, and by its own
strength ? Why not then equally in all, in one as well as another ? Miracles
indeed affect more, because they testify the immediate operation of God
without the concurrence of second causes ; not that there is more of the
power of God shining in them than in the other.

(2.) This power is evident in moral government.

[1.] In the restraint of the malicious nature of the devil. Since Satan
hath the power of an angel and the malice of a devil, what safety would there
be for our persons from destruction, what security for our goods from rifling
by this invincible, potent, and envious spirit, if his power were not restrained
and his malice curbed by one more mighty than himself? How much doth
he envy God the glory of his creation, and man the use and benefit of it?
How desirous would he be in regard of his passion, how able in regard of
his strength and subtilty, to overthrow or infect all worship but what was
directed to himself ; to manage all things according to his lusts, turn all
things topsy-turvy, plague the world, burn cities, houses, plunder us of the
supports of nature, waste kingdoms, &c., if he were not held in a chain as
a ravenous lion, or a furious wild horse, by the creator and governor of the
world ? What remedy could be used by man against the activity of this
unseen and swift spirit ? The world could not subsist under his malice :
he would practise the same things upon all, as he did upon Job, when he
had got leave from his governor ; turn the swords of men into one another's
bowels ; send fire from heaven upon the fruits of the earth, and the cattle
intended for the use of man ; raise winds to shake and tear our houses upon
* Faucher, sur Act. vol, ii. p. 47.

140 chaknock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

our heads ; daub our bodies with scabs and boils, and let all the humours
in our blood loose upon us. He that envied Adam in paradise, doth envy
us the pleasure of enjoying its outworks ; if we were not destroyed by him,
we should live in a continued vexation by spectres and apparitions, affright-
ing sounds and noise, as some think the Egyptians did in that three days'
darkness. He would be alway ' winnowing ' us, as he desired to winnow
Peter, Luke xxii. 31. But God overmasters his strength, that he cannot
move a hair's-breadth beyond his tether ; not only he is unable to touch an
upright Job, but to lay his fingers upon one of the unbeUeving Gadarenes'
forbidden and filthy swine without special licence, Mat. viii. 31. When
he is cast out of one place, he 'walks through dry places seeking rest,'
Luke ii. 24, new objects for his malicious designs, ' but finding none,' till
God lets loose the reins upon him for a new employment. Though Satan's
power be great, yet God suff'ers him not to tempt as much as his diabolical
appetite would, but as much as divine wisdom thinks fit, and the divine
power tempers the other's active malice and gives the creature victory, where
the enemy intended spoil and captivity. How much stronger is God than
all the legions of hell, as he that holds a strong man from effecting his pur-
pose testifies more ability than his adversary ! Luke xi. 2. How doth he
lock him up for a thousand years in a pound which he cannot leap over,
Rev. XX. 2 ; and this restraint is wrought partly by blinding the devil in his
designs, partly by denying him concourse to his motion, as he hindered
the active quality of the fire upon the three children, by withdrawing his
power, which was necessary to the motion of it ; and his power is as necessary
for the motion of the devil as for that of any other creature. Sometimes
he makes him to confesss him against his own interest, as Apollo's oracle
confessed.! And though, when the devil was cast out of the possessed
person, he publicly owned Christ to be ' the holy one of God,' Mark i. 24,
to render him suspected by the people of having commerce with the unclean
spirits, yet this he could not do without the leave and permission of God,
that the power of Christ in stopping his mouth and imposing silence upon
him might be evidenced, and that it reaches to the gates of hell as well as to
the quieting of winds and waves. This is a part of the strength as well as
the wisdom of God, that ' the deceived and the deceiver are his,' Job xii.
16 : wisdom to defeat, and power to over-rule his most malicious designs
to his own glory.

[2. J In the restraint of the natural corruption of men. Since the impetus
of original corruptions in the blood conveyed down from Adam to the veins
of all his posterity, and universally diffused in all mankind, what wreck and
havoc would it make in the world, if it were not suppressed by this divine
power, which presides over the hearts of men ! Man is so wretched by
nature, that nothing but what is vile and pernicious can drop from him.
Man ' drinks iniquity like water,' Job xv. 16, being by nature abominable
and filthy. He greedily swallows all matter for iniquity, everything suitable
to the mire and poison in his nature, and would sprout it out with all fierce-
ness and insolence. God himself gives us the description of man's nature,
Gen. vi. 5, that he hath not one good imagination at any time. And the
apostle from the psalmist dilates and comments upon it, Rom. iii. 10, &c. :
' There is none righteous, no not one ; their mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood,' &c. This corruption is equal
to all, natural to all ; it is not more poisonous or more fierce in one man
than in another. The root of all men is the same ; all the branches there-
fore do equally possess the villanous nature of the root. No child of Adam
t Cseteros deos aerios esse, &c. — Grot. Verit. rel. lib. iv.

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 141

can by natural descent be better than Adam. How fruitful would this
loathsome lake be in all kind of steams ! What unbridled licentiousness
and headstrong fury would triumph in the world, if the power of God did
not interpose itself to lock down the flood-gates of it ? What rooting up
of human society would there be ; how would the world be drenched in
blood, the number of malefactors be greater than that of apprehenders and
punishers ! How would the prints of natural laws be razed out of the heart,
if God should leave human nature to itself ! Who can read the first chapter
to the Romans, verses 24-29, without acknowledging this truth, where there is
a catalogue of those villanies which followed upon God's pulling up the
sluices and letting the malignity of their inward corruption have its natural
course ? If God did not hold back the fury of man, his garden would be
over-run, his vine rooted up, the inclinations of men would hurry them to
the worst of wickedness. How great is that power that curbs, bridles, or
changes as many headstrong horses at once and every minute, as there are
sons of Adam upon the earth ! ' The floods lift up their waves ; the Lord
on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty
waves of the sea,' Psal. xciii. 3, 4, that doth hush and pen in the turbulent
passions of men.

[3.] In the ordering and framing the hearts of men to his own ends.
That must be an omnipotent hand that grasps and contains the hearts of
all men, the heart of the meanest person as well as of the most towering
angel, and turns them as he pleases, and makes them, sometime ignorantly,
sometime knowingly, concur to the accomplishment of his own purposes.
When the hearts of men are so numerous, their thoughts so various and
diflerent from one another, yet he hath a key to those millions of hearts, and
with infinite power,'guided by as infinite wisdom, he draws them into what
channels he pleases for the gaining his own ends. Though the Jews had
embrued their hands in the blood of our Saviour, and their rage was yet
reeking hot against his followers, God bridled their fury in the church's
infancy till it had got some strength, and cast a terror upon them by the
wonders wrought by the apostles : Acts ii. 43, * And fear came upon every
soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.' Was there
not the same reason in the nature of the works our Saviour wrought, to
point them to the finger of God and calm their rage ? Yet did not the
power of God work upon their passions in those miracles, nor stop the
impetuousness of the corruption resident in their hearts. Yet now those
who had the boldness to attack the Son of God and nail him to the cross,
are firighted at the appearance of twelve unarmed apostles, as the sea
seems to be afraid when it approacheth the bounds of the feeble sand.
How did God bend the hearts of the Egyptians to the Israelites, and turn
them to that point as to lend their most costly vessels, their precious
jewels and rich garments, to supply those whom they had just before tyran-
nically loaded with chains ! Exod. iii. 21, 22. When a great part of
an army came upon Jehoshaphat to despatch him into another world, how
doth God in a trice touch their hearts, and move them by a secret instinct
at once to ' depart from him !' 1 Chron. xviii. 31, as if you should see a
numerous sight of birds in a moment turn wing another way by a sudden
and joint consent. When he gave Saul a kingdom, he gave him a spirit fit
for government, and * gave him another heart,' 1 Sam. x. 9, and brought
the people to submit to his yoke, who a little before wandered about the
land upon no nobler employment than the seeking of asses. It is no small
remark of the power of God to make a number of strong and discontented
persons, and desirous enough of liberty, to bend their necks under the yoke

142 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

of government, and submit to the authority of one, and that of their own
nature, often weaker and unwiser than the most of them, and many times
an oppressor and invader of their rights, Upon this account David calls
God his fortress, tower, shield, Ps. cxliv. 2, all terms of strength in
subduing the people under him. It is the mighty hand of God that links
princes and people together in the bands of government. The same hand
that assuageth the waves of the sea, suppresseth the tumults of the people.

(3.) It appears in his gracious and judicial government.

[l.J In his gracious government. In the deliverance of his church : he
is the ' strength of Israel,' 1 Sam. xv. 29, and hath protected his little flock
in the midst of wolves, and maintained their standing when the strongest
kingdoms have sunk, and the best jointed states have been broken in pieces ;
when judgments have ravaged countries and torn up the mighty, as a tem-
pestuous wind hath often done the tallest trees, which seemed to threaten
heaven with their tops, and dare the storm with the depth of their roots,
when yet the vine and rose-bushes have stood firm, and been seen in their
beauty next morning. The state of the church hath outlived the most
flourishing monarchies, when there hath been a mighty knot of adversaries
against her ; when the bulls of Bashan have pushed her, and the whole tribe
of the dragon have sharpened their weapons and edged their malice ; when
the voice was strong, and the hopes high to raze her foundation even with
the ground ; when hell hath roared ; when the wit of the world hath con-
trived, and the strength of the world hath attempted her ruin ; when decrees
have been passed against her, and the powers of the world armed for the
execution of them ; when her friends have drooped and skulked in corners ;
when there was no eye to pity, and no hand to assist, help hath come from
heaven ; her enemies have been defeated, kings have brought gifts to her
and reared her ; tears have been wiped ofi" her cheeks, and her very enemies,
by an unseen power, have been forced to court her, whom before they would
have devoured quick. The devil and his armies have sneaked into their
den, and the church hath triumphed when she hath been upon the brink of
the grave. Thus did God send a mighty angel to be the executioner of Sen-
nacherib's army, and the protector of Jerusalem, who run his sword into the
hearts of eighty thousand, when they were ready to swallow up his beloved
city, 2 Kings xix. 35.

When the knife was at the throats of the Jews in Shushan, by a powerful
hand it was turned into the hearts of their enemies, Esther viii. With
what outstretched arm were the Israelites freed from the Egyptian yoke ?
Deut. iv. 34. When Pharaoh had mustered a great army to pursue them,
assisted with six hundred chariots of war, the Ked Sea obstructed their pas-
sage before, and an enraged enemy trod on their rear ; when the fearful
Israehtes despaired of deliverance, and the insolent Egyptian assured himself
of his revenge, God stretches out his irresistible arm to defeat the enemy
and assist his people ; he strikes down the wolves, and preserves the flock.
God restrained the Egyptian enmity against the Israelites till they were at
the brink of the Red Sea, and then lets them follow their humour and pur-
sue the fugitives, that his power might more gloriously shine forth in the
deUverance of the one and the destruction of the other. God might have
brought Israel out of Egypt in the time of those kings that had remembered
the good service of Joseph to their country, but he leaves them till the reign
of a cruel tyrant, sufi'ers them to be slaves, that they might by his sole power
be conquerors, which had had no appearance had there been a wilUng dis-
mission of them at the first summons : Exod. ix. 16, 'In very deed, for this
cause have I raised thee up, for to shew my power, and that my name might

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 143

be declared throughout all the earth.' I have permitted thee to rise up
against my people, and keep them in captivity, that thou mightest be an
occasion for the manifestation of my power in their rescue ; and whilst thou
art obstinate to enslave them, I will stretch out my arm to deliver them, and
make my name famous among the Gentiles, in the wreck of thee and thy
host in the Red Sea. The deliverance of the church hath not been in one
age or in one part of the world, but God hath signalized his power in all
kingdoms where she hath had a footing. As he hath guided her in all places
by one rule, animated her by one spirit, so he hath pi'otected her by the
same aim of power.

When the Roman emperors banded all their force against her for about
three hundred years, they were further from effecting her ruin at the end
than when they first attempted it : the church grew under their sword, and
was hatched under the wings of the Roman eagle, which were spread to
destroy her. The ark was elevated by the deluge, and the waters of the
devil, poured out to drown her, did but slime the earth for a new increase of
her. She hath sometime been beaten down, and, like Lazarus, hath seemed
to He in the grave for some days, that the power of God might be more
visible in her sudden resurrection, and lifting up her head above the throne
of her persecutors.

[2,] In his judicial proceedings. The deluge was no small testimony of
his power, in opening the cisterns of heaven, and pulling up the sluices of
the sea. He doth but call for the waters of the sea, and they ' pour them-
selves upon the face of the earth,' Amos ix. 6. In forty days' time, the
waters overtopped the highest mountains fifteen cubits, Gen, vii. 17, 19, 20 ;
and by the same power he afterwards reduced the sea to its proper channel,
as a roaring lion into its den. A shower of fire from heaven upon Sodom
and the cities of the plain, was a signal display of his power, either in
creating it on the sudden for the execution of his righteous sentence, or
sending down the element of fire, contrary to its nature (which affects ascent),
for the punishment of rebels against the light of nature.

How often hath he ruined the most flourishing monarchies, led princes
away spoiled, and overthrown the mighty, which Job makes an argument
of his strength. Job xii. 13, 14. Troops of unknown people, the Goths and
Vandals, broke the Romans, a warlike people, and hurled dow^n all before
them. They could not have had the thought to succeed in such an attempt,
unless God had given them strength and motion for the executing his judi-
cial vengeance upon the people of his wrath.

How did he evidence his power by daubing the throne of Pharaoh, and
his chamber of presence, as well as the houses of his subjects, with the slime
of frogs ; turning their waters into blood, and their dust into biting
lice, Exod. vii. 20, viii. 3 ; raising his militia of locusts against them ;
causing a three days' darkness without stopping the motion of the sun ;
taking off their first-born, the excellency of their strength, in a night, by the
stroke of the angel's sword ! He takes off the chariot wheels of Pharaoh,
and presents him with a destruction where he expected a victory ; brings
those waves over the heads of him and his host, which stood firm as marble
walls for the safety of his people. The sea is made to swallow them up,
that durst not by the order of their governor touch the Israelites. It only
sprinkled the one as a type of baptism, and drowned the other as an image
of hell. Thus he made it both a deliverer and a revenger, the instrument
of an offensive and defensive war. ' He brings princes to nothing, and
makes the judges of the earth as vanity,' Isa. xl. 23, 24. Great monarchs
have by this power been hurled from their thrones, and their sceptres (like

144 chaenock's wokks. [Job XXYI. 14.

Venice glasses) broken before their faces, and they been advanced that
have had the least hopes of grandeur. He hath plucked up cedars by the
roots, lopped off the branches, and set a shrub to grow up in the place ; dis-
solved rocks, and established bubbles : Luke i. 52, ' He hath shewed strength
with his arm : he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their
hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted them of
low degree.'

And these things he doth magnify his power in.

First, By ordering the nature of creatures as he pleases ; by restraining
their force, or guiding their motions. The restraint of the destructive quali-
ties of the creatures argues as great a power as the change of their nature,
yea, and a greater. The qualities of creatures may be changed by art and
composition, as in the preparing of medicines ; but what but a divine power
could restrain the operation of the fire from the three children, while it re-
tained its heat and burning quality in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace ? The
operation was curbed while its nature was preserved. All creatures are
called his host, because he marshals and ranks them as an army to serve his
purposes : the whole scheme of nature is ready to favour men when God
orders it, and ready to punish men when God commissions it. He gave the
Red Sea but a check, and it obeyed his voice : Ps. cvi. 9, ' He rebuked the
Red Sea also, and it was dried up ;' the motion of it ceased, and the waters
of it were ranged as defensive walls, to secure the march of his people ; and,
at the motion of the hand of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the sea re-
covered its violence, and the walls that were framed came tumbling down
upon the Egyptians' heads, Exod. xiv. 27. The Creator of nature is not
led by the necessity of nature ; he that settled the order of nature can
change or restrain the order of nature according to his sovereign pleasure.
The most necessary and useful creatures he can use as instruments of his
vengeance. Water is necessary to cleanse, and by that he can deface a
world ; fire is necessary to warm, and by that he can burn a Sodom. From
the water he formed the fowl, Gen. i. 21, and by that he dissolves them in
the deluge ; fire or heat is necessary to the generation of creatures, and by
that he ruins the cities of the plain. He orders all as he pleases, to per-
form every tittle and 2»(nctilio of his purpose. The sea observed him so
exactly that it drowned not one Israelite, nor saved one Egyptian : Ps.
cvi. 11, ' There was not one of them left.' And to perfect the Israehtes'
deliverance, he followed them with testimonies of his power above the
strength of nature : when they wanted drink, he orders Moses to strike a
rock, and the rock spouts a river, and a channel is formed for it to attend
them in their journey ; when they wanted bread, he dressed manna for them in
the heavens, and sent it to their tables in the desert ; when he would de-
clare his strength, he calls to the heavens to pour down righteousness, and
to the earth to bring forth salvation, Isa. xlv. 8. Though God had created
righteousness or deliverance for the Jews in Babylon, yet he calls to the
heavens and the earth to be assistant to the design of Cyrus, whom he had
raised for that purpose, as he speaks in the beginning of the chapter, ver.
1-4. As God created man for a supernatural end, and all creatures for
man as their immediate end, so he makes them, according to opportunities,
subservient to that supernatural end of man, for which he created them. He
that spans the heavens with his fist can shoot all creatures, like an arrow,
to hit what mark he pleases ; he that spread the heavens and the earth by a
word, and can, by a word, fold them up more easily than a man can a gar-
ment, Heb. i. 12, can order the streams of nature ; cannot he work without
nature as well as with it, beyond nature, contrary to nature, that can (as it

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 145

were) fillip nature with his finger into that nothing whence he drew it?
Who can cast down the sun from his throne, clap the distinguished parts of
the world together, and make them march in the same order to their con-
fusion as they did in their creation ; who can jumble the whole frame to-
gether, and by a word dissolve the pillars of the world, and make the fabric
lie in a ruinous heap.

Secondly, In eftecting his purposes by small means ; in making use of
the meanest creatures. As the power of God is seen in the creation of the
smallest creatures, and assembling so many perfections in the little body of
an insect, as an ant or spider, so his power is not less magnified in the use
he makes of them. As he magnifies his wisdom by using ignorant instru-
ments, so he exalts his power by employing weak instruments in his service.
The meanness and imperfection of the matters sets off" the excellency of the
workman, so the weakness of the instrument is a foil to the power of the
principal agent. When God hath efiected things by means in the Scripture,
he hath usually brought about his purposes by weak instruments.

Moses, a fugitive from Egypt, and Aaron, a captive in it, are the instru-
ments of the Israelites' deliveranee. By the motion of Moses his rod, he
works wonders in the court of Pharaoh, and summons up his judgments
against him. He brought down Pharaoh's stomach for a while by a squad-
ron of lice and locusts, wherein divine power was more seen than if Moses
had brought him to his own articles by a multitude of warhke troops. The fall
of the walls of Jericho, by the sound of ram's horns. Josh. vi. 20, was a more
glorious character of God's power, than if Joshua had battered it down with
an hundred of warlike engines. Thus the gi-eat army of the Midianites,
which lay as grasshoppers upon the ground, were routed by Gideon at the
head of three hundred men ; and Goliah, a giant, laid level with the gi'ound
by David, a stripling, by the force of a sling ; a thousand Philistines de-
spatched out of the world by the jaw-bone of an ass in the hand of Samson.
He can master a stout nation by an army of locusts, and render the teeth of
those little insects as destructive as the teeth, yea the strongest teeth, the
cheek-teeth of a great lion, Joel i. 6, 7. The thunderbolt, which produceth
sometimes dreadful efiects, is compacted of little atoms which fly in the air,
small vapours drawn up by the sun, and mixed with other sulphurous matter
and putrefying juice. Nothing is so weak, but his strength can make victori-
ous ; nothing so small, but by his power he can accompUsh his great ends
by it ; nothing so vile, but his might can conduct to his glory ; and no
nation so mighty, but he can waste and enfeeble by the meanest creatures.
God is great in power in the greatest things, and not little in the smallest ;
his power in the minutest creatures, which he uses for his service, surmounts
the force of our understanding.

3. The power of God appears in redemption. As our Saviour is called
the wisdom of God, so he is called the power of God, 1 Cor. i. 24. The
arm of power was lifted up as high as the designs of wisdom were laid deep.
As this way of redemption could not be contrived but by an infinite wisdom,
so it could not be accomplished but by an infinite power ; none but God
could shape such a design, and none but God could efiect it. The divine
power in temporal deliverances and freedom from the slavery of human op-
pressors veils to that which glitters in redemption, whereby the devil is
defeated in his designs, stripped of his spoils, and yoked in his strength ;
the power of God in creation requires not those degrees of admiration, as in
redemption. In creation, the world was erected from nothing ; as there was
nothing to act, so there was nothing to oppose ; no victorious devil was in
that to be subdued, no thundering law to be silenced, no death to be con-

VOL. II. K

146 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

quered, no transgression to be pardoned and rooted out, no hell to be shut,
no ignominious death upon the cross to be suffered. It had been in the nature
of the thing an easier thing to divine power to have created a new world,
than repaired a broken and purified a polluted one. This is the most ad-
mirable work that ever God brought forth in the world, greater than all the
marks of his power in the first creation.

And this will appear,

(1.) In the person redeeming.

(2.) In the publication and propagation of the doctrine of redemption.

(3.) In the application of redemption.

(1.) In the person redeeming.

[1.] First, In his conception.

First, He was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin :
Luke i. 35, • The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee ;' which act is expressed to be the effect of
the infinite power of God, and it expresses the supernatural manner of the
forming the humanity of our Saviour, and signifies not the divine nature of
Christ issuing itself into the womb of the virgin ; for the angel refers it to
the manner of the operation of the Holy Ghost in the producing the human
nature of Christ, and not to the nature assuming that humanity into union
with itself. The Holy Ghost, or the third person in the Trinity, over-
shadowed the virgin, and by a creative act framed the humanity of Christ,
and united it to the divinity. It is therefore expressed by a word of
the same import with that used Gen. i. 2, ' The Spirit moved upon
the face of the waters ;' which signifies (as it were) a brooding upon the
chaos, shadowing it with his wings, as hens sit upon their eggs to form
them and hatch them into animals ; or else it is an allusion to the cloud
■which covered the tent of the congregation, when the glory of the Lord
filled the tabernacle, Exod. xl. 34. It was not such a creative act as we
call immediate, which is a production out of nothing ; but a mediate crea-
tion, such as God's bringing things into form out of the first matter, which
had nothing but an obediential or passive disposition to whatsoever stamp
the powerful wisdom of God should imprint upon it. So the substance of
the virgin had no active, but only a passive disposition to this work. The
matter of the body was earthy, the substance of the virgin ; the forming of
it was heavenly, the Holy Ghost working upon that matter. And therefore
when it is said, Mat. i. 18, that ' she was found with child of the Holy
Ghost,' it is to be understood of the efficacy of the Holy Ghost, not of the
substance of the Holy Ghost. The matter was natural, but the manner of
conceiving was in a supernatural way, above the methods of nature. In
reference to the active principle, the Redeemer is called in the prophecy,
Isa. iv. 2, ' the Branch of the Lord,' in regard of the divine hand that
planted him ; in respect to the passive principle, * the Fruit of the earth,'
in regard of the womb that bare him, and therefore said to be ' made of a
woman,' Gal. iv. 4. That part of the flesh of the virgin whereof the human
nature of Christ was made, was refined and purified from corruption by the
overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, as a skilful workman separates the dross
from the gold. Our Saviour is therefore called ' that holy thing,' Luke
i. 35, though born of the virgin. He was necessarily some way to descend
from Adam. God indeed might have created his body out of nothing, or
have formed it (as he did Adam's) out of the dust of the ground ; but had
he been thus extraordinarily formed, and not propagated from Adam, though
he had been a man like one of us, yet he would not have been of kin to us,
because it would not have been a nature derived from Adam, the common

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 147

parent of us all. It was therefore necessary to an affinity with us, not only
that he should have the same human nature, but that it should flow from
the same principle, and be propagated to him.* But now, by this way of
producing the humanity of Christ of the substance of the virgin, he was in
Adam (say some) corporeally, but not seminally; of the substance of Adam,
or a daughter of Adam, but not of the seed of Adam. And so he is of the
same nature that had sinned, and so what he did and suffered may be im-
puted to us, which, had he been created as Adam, could not be claimed in
a legal and judicial way.

Secondly, It was not convenient he should be born in the common order
of nature, of father and mother, for whosoever is so born is polluted : * A
clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean,' Job xiv. 4. And our
Saviour had been incapable of being a redeemer had he been tainted with
the least spot of our nature, but would have stood in need of redemption
himself. Besides, it had been inconsistent with the holiness of the divine
nature td have assumed a tainted and defiled body. He that was the foun-
tain of blessedness to all nations, was not to be subject to the curse of the
law for himself, which he would have been had be been conceived in an
ordinary way. He that was to overturn the devil's empire, was not to be
any way captive under the devil's power, as a creature under the curse; nor
could he be able to break the serpent's head had he been tainted with the
serpent's breath.

Again, supposing that almighty God, by his divine power, had so ordered
the matter, and so perfectly sanctified an earthly father and mother from all
original spot, that the human nature might have been transmitted immacu-
late to him, as well as the Holy Ghost did purge that part of the flesh of
the virgin of which the body of Christ was made ; yet it was not convenient
that that person that was ' God blessed for ever,' as well as man, partaking
of our nature, should have a conception in the same manner as ours, but
diflerent, and in some measure conformable to the infinite dignity of his
person, which could not have been had not a supernatural power and a
divine person been concerned as an active principle in it. Besides, such a
birth had not been agreeable to the first promise, which calls him ' the seed
of the woman,' Gen. i. 15, not of the man, and so the veracity of God had
sufiered some detriment. The ' seed of the woman' only is set in opposition
to the ' seed of the serpent.'

Thirdhj, By this manner of conception the holiness of his nature is
secured, and his fitness for his office is assured to us. It is now a pure
and unpolluted humanity that is the temple and tabernacle of the divinity.
The fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, and dwells in him holily;
his humanity is supernaturalised and elevated by the activity of the Holy
Ghost, hatching the flesh of the virgin into man, as the chaos into a world.
Though we read of some ' sanctified from the womb,' it was not a pure and
perfect holiness ; it was like the light of fire mixed with smoke, an infused
hoHness accompanied with a natural taint ; but the holiness of the Redeemer
by his conception is like the light of the sun, pure and without spot, the
Spirit of holiness supplying the place of a father in a way of creation.

His fitness for his office is also assured to us ; for being born of the virgin,
one of our nature, but conceived by the Spirit, a divine person, the guilt of
our sins may be imputed to him because of our nature, without the slain of
sin inherent in him ; because of his supernatural conception he is capable,
as one of kin to us, to bear our curse, without being touched by our taint.
By this means our sinful nature is assumed without sin in that nature which
* Amyrald, in Symbol, p. 103, &c.

148 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

was assumed by him. Flesh he hath, but not ' sinful flesh,' Rom. viii. 3 ;
real flesh, but not really sinful, only by way of imputation.

Nothing but the power of God is evident in this whole work. By the
ordinary laws and course of nature a virgin could not bear a son, nothing
but a supernatural and almighty grace could intervene to make so holy and
perfect a conjunction. The generation of others, in an ordinary way, is by
male and female ; but the virgin is overshadowed by the Spirit, and power
of the Highest.* Man only is the product of natural generation ; this which
is born of the virgin is the holy thing, the Son of God. In other genera-
tions a rational soul is only united to a material body ; but in this, the divine
nature is united with the human in one person by an indissoluble union.

[2.j The second act of power in the person redeeming is the union of the
two natures, the divine and human. The designing indeed of this was an act
of wisdom, but the accomplishing it was an act of power.

First, There is in this redeeming person a union of two natures. He is
God and man in one person : Heb. i. 8, 9, * Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever
and ever. God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness,'
&c. The Son is called God, having a throne for ever and ever, and the
unction speaks him man ; the Godhead cannot be anointed, nor hath any
fellows. Humanity and divinity are ascribed to him, Rom. i. 3, 4. He
was * of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the
Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.' The divinity and humanity
are both prophetically joined : Zech. xii. 10, ' I will pour out my Spirit,' —
the pouring forth the Spirit is an act only of divine grace and power, — ' and
they shall look upon me whom they have pierced ;' the same person pours
forth the Spirit as God and is pierced as man. ' The Word was made flesh,'
John i. 14 ; Word from eternity was made flesh in time, Word and flesh in
one person ; a great God and a little infant.

Secondly, The terms of this union were infinitely distant. What greater
distance can there be than between the Deity and humanity, between the
Creator and a creature ? Can you imagine the distance between eternity
and time, infinite power and miserable infirmity, an immortal Spirit and
dying flesh, the highest being and nothing ? Yet these are espoused. A
God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a man of perpetual
sorrows, life incapable to die joined to a body in that economy incapable to
live without dying first, infinite purity and a reputed sinner, eternal blessed-
ness with a cursed nature, almightiness and weakness, omniscience and
ignorance, immutability and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and
comprehensibility, that which cannot be comprehended and that which can
be comprehended, that which is entirely independent and that which is
totally dependent, the Creator forming all things and the creature made
met together to a personal union, the Word made flesh, John i. 14, the
eternal Son the seed of Abraham, Heb. ii. 16. What more miraculous
than for God to become man, and man to become God ! That a person
possessed of all the perfections of the Godhead should inherit all the imper-
fections of the manhood in one person, sin only excepted ; a holiness
incapable of sinning to be made sin ; God blessed for ever taking the pro-
perties of human nature, and human nature admitted to a union with the
properties of the Creator ; the fulness of the Deity and the emptiness of man
united together. Col. ii. 9, not by a shining of the Deity upon the humanity,
as the light of the sun upon the earth, but by an inhabitation or indwelling
of the Deity in the humanity : was there not need of an infinite power to
bring together terms so far asunder, to elevate the humanity to be capable
* Amyraut, sur Timole, p. 292.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 149

of, and disposed for, a conjunction with the Deity ? If a clod of earth should
be advanced to, and united with, the body of the sun, such an advance would
evidence itself to be a work of almighty power ; the clod hath nothing in its
own nature to render it so glorious, no power to climb up to so high a dignity.
How little would such a union be to that we are speaking of ! Nothing less
than an incomprehensible power could effect what an incomprehensible wisdom
did project in this affair.

Thirdly, Especially since the union is so strait. It is not such a union
as is between a man and his house he dwells in, whence he goes out and to
which he returns, without any alteration of himself or his house ; nor such
a union as is between a man and his garment, which both communicate and
receive warmth from one another ; nor such as is between an artificer and
his instrument wherewith he works ; nor such a union as one friend hath
with another. All these are distant things, not one in nature, but have
distinct substances. Two friends, though united by love, are distinct per-
sons ; a man and his clothes, an artificer and his instruments, have distinct
substances ; but the humanity of Christ hath no substance but in the person
of Christ.

The straitness of this union is expressed, and may be somewhat conceived
by the union of fire with iron.* Fire pierceth through all the parts of iron,
it unites itself with every particle, bestows a light, heat, purity upon all of
it ; you cannot distinguish the iron from the fire, or the fire from the iron ;
yet they are distinct natures. So the Deity is united to the whole humanity,
seasons it, and bestows an excellency upon it, yet the natures still remain
distinct. And as, during that union of fire with iron, the iron is incapable of
rust or blackness, so is the humanity incapable of sin. And as the opera-
tion of fire is attributed to the red hot iron (as the iron may be said to heat,
burn, and the fire may be said to cut and pierce), yet the imperfections of
the iron do not affect the fire ; so in this mystery, those things which belong
to the divinity are ascribed to the humanity, and those things which belong
to the humanity are ascribed to the divinity, in regard of the person in
whom those natures are united ; yet the imperfections of the humanity do
not hurt the divinity. The divinity of Christ is as really united with the
humanity as the soul with the body. The person was one, though the
natures were two ; so united, that the sufferings of the human nature were
the sufferings of that person, and the dignity of the divine was imputed to
the human by reason of that unity of both in one person. Hence the blood
of the human nature is said to be the blood of God, Acts xx. 28. All things
ascribed to the Son of God may be ascribed to this man, and the things
ascribed to this man may be ascribed to the Son of God, as this man is the
Son of God eternal, almighty. f And it may be said God suffered, was
crucified, &c. ; for the person of Christ is but one, most simple ; the person
suffered, that was God and man united, making one person.

Fourthly, And though the union be so strait, yet without confusion of the
natures, or change of them into one another. The two natures of Christ are
not mixed, ^ as liquors that incorporate with one another when they are
poured into a vessel ; the divine nature is not turned into the human, nor
the human into the divine ; one nature doth not swallow up another and
make a third nature distinct from each of them. The Deity is not turned
into the humanity, as air (which is next to a spirit) may be thickened and
turned into water, and water may be rarefied into air by the power of heat
boiling it. The Deity cannot be changed, because the nature of it is to be
* Lessius de Perf. Divin., lib. xii. cap. iv. p. 104.
t Ibid., p. 103, 104. X Ibid., p. 103, 104 ; Arayrald, Irenic, p. 23A.

150 chaknock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

unchangeable. It would not be deity if it were mortal and capable of suffer-
ing. The humanity is not changed into the deity, for then Christ could not
have been a sufferer. If the humanity had been swallowed up into the deity,
it had lost its own distinct nature, and put on the nature of the Deity, and
consequently been incapable of suffering. Finite can never by any mixture
be changed into infinite, nor infinite into finite.

This union in this regard may be resembled to the union of light and air,
which are strictly joined ; for the light passes through all parts of the air,
but they are not confounded, but remain in their distinct essences as before
the union, without the least confusion with one another. The divine nature
remains as it was before the union, entire in itself, only the divine person
assumes another nature to himself.* The human nature remains as it would
have done had it existed separately from the Aoyoc,, except that then it would
have had a proper subsistence by itself, which now it borrows from its union
with the Aoyog, or Word, but that doth not belong to the constitution of its
nature.

Now let us consider what a wonder of power is all this. The knitting a noble
soul to a body of clay was not so great an exploit of almightiness as the espous-
ing infinite and finite together. Man is further distant from God than man
from nothing. What a wonder is it that two natures infinitely distant should
be more intimately united than anything in the world, and yet without any con-
fusion ! That the same person should have both a glory and a grief; an infinite
joy in the Deity, and an unexpressible sorrow in the humanity; that a God upon
a throne should be an infant in a cradle ; the thundering Creator be a weeping
babe and a suffering man, are such expressions of mighty power, as well as
condescending love, that they astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven.

[3.] Power was evident in the progress of his life. In the miracles he
wrought, how often did he expel malicious and powerful devils from their
habitations, hurl them from their thrones, and make them fall from heaven
like lightning. How many wonders were wrought by his bare word or a
single touch : sight restored to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, palsied
members restored to the exercise of their functions, a dismiss given to many
deplorable maladies, impure leprosies chased from the persons they had in-
fected, and bodies beginning to putrefy raised from the grave. But the
mightiest argument of power was his patience : that he who was in his
divine nature elevated above the world should so long continue upon a dung-
hill, ' endure the contradiction of sinners against himself,' be patiently sub-
ject to the reproaches and indignities of men, without displaying that justice
which was essential to the Deity, and in especial manner daily merited by
their provoking crimes. The patience of man under great affronts is a
greater argument of power than the brawniness of his arm. A strength
employed in the revenge of every injury signifies a greater infirmity in the
soul than there can be ability in the body.

[4.j Divine power was apparent in his resurrection. The unlocking the
belly of the whale for the deliverance of Jonas, the rescue of Daniel from
the den of lions, and the restraining the fire from burning the three children,
were signal declarations of his power, and types of the resurrection of our
Saviour. But what are those to that which was represented by them?
That was a power over natural causes, a curbing of beasts and restraining
of elements ; but in the resurrection of Christ, God exercised a power over
himself, and quenched the flames of his own wrath, hotter than millions of
Nebuchadnezzar's furnaces ; unlocked the prison doors, wherein the curses
of the law had lodged our Saviour stronger than the belly and ribs of a
* Amyrald, Irenic, p. 282=

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 151

leviathan. In the rescue of Daniel and Jonas, God overpowered beasts, and
in this tore up the strength of the old serpent, and plucked the sceptre from
the hand of the enemy of mankind. The work of resurrection, indeed, con-
sidered in itself, requires the efficacy of an almighty power. Neither man
nor angel can create new dispositions in a dead body, to render it capable of
lodging a spiritual soul, nor can they restore a dislodged soul by their own
power to such a body. The restoring a dead body to life requires an infinite
power, as well as the creation of the world. But there was in the resurrec-
tion of Christ something more difficult than this. While he lay in the grave
he was under the curse of the law, under the execution of that dreadful
sentence, 'Thou shalt die the death.' His resurrection was not only the
re-tying the marriage knot between his soul and body, or the roUing the
stone from the grave, but a taking off an infinite weight, the sin of mankind,
which lay upon him. So vast a weight could not be removed without the
strength of an almighty arm. It is therefore ascribed not to an ordinary
operation, but an operation with power, Rom. i. 4, and such a power
wherein the glory of the Father did appear : Rom. vi. 4, ' Raised up from
the dead by the glory of the Father;' that is, the glorious power of Grod.
As the eternal generation is stupendous, so is his resurrection, which is
called a new begetting of him. Acts xiii. 33. It is a wonder of power that
the divine and human nature should be joined, and no less wonder that his
person should surmount and rise up from the curse of God under which he
lay. The apostle therefore adds one expression to another, and heaps up a
variety, signifying thereby that one was not enough to represent it : Eph.
i. 19, 'Exceeding greatness of power,' and 'working of mighty power, which
he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.' It was an hyj^er-
bole of power, the excellency of the mightiness of his strength; the loftiness
of the expressions seems to come short of the apprehension he had of it in
his soul.

(2.) Secondly, This power appears in the publication and propagation of
the doctrine of redemption.

The divine power will appear, if you consider,

[1.] The nature of the doctrine. •

[2.] The instruments employed in it.

[3.] The means they used to propagate it.

[4.] The success they had.

[1.] The nature of the doctrine.

First, It was contrary to the common received reason of the world. The
philosophers, the masters of knowledge among the Gentiles, had maxims of
a difi"erent stamp from it. Though they agreed in the being of a God, yet
their notions of his nature were confused and embroiled with many errors ;
the unity of God was not commonly assented unto ; they had multiplied
deities according to the fancies they had received from some of a more
elevated wit and refined brain than others. Though they had some notion
of mediators, yet they placed in those seats their pubHc benefactors ; men
that had been useful to the world, or their particular countries, in imparting
to them some profitable invention. To discard those was to charge them-
selves with ingratitude to them, from whom they had received signal benefits,
and to whose mediation, conduct, or protection they ascribed all the success
they had been blessed with in their several provinces, and to charge them-
selves with folly, for rendering an honour and worship to them so long.
Could the doctrine of a crucified Mediator, whom they had never seen, that
had conquered no country for them, never enlarged their territories, brought

152 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

to light no new profitable invention for the increase of their earthly welfare,
as the rest had done, be thought sufficient to balance so many of their
reputed heroes ? How ignorant were they in the foundations of the true
religion ! The belief of a providence was staggering ; nor had they a
true prospect of the nature of virtue and vice ; yet they had a fond opinion
of the strength of their own reason, and the maxims that had been handed
down to them by their predecessors, which Paul entitles, a ' science falsely
so called,' 1 Tim. vi. 20, either meant of the philosophers or the Gnostics.
They presumed that they were able to measure all things by their own
reason ; whence, when the apostle came to preach the doctrine of the gospel
at Athens, the great school of reason in that age, they gave him no better a
title than that of a * babbler, 'f Acts xvii. 18, and openly mocked him, ver. 32,
I'TTs^fioXoyog, a seed-gatherer, one that hath no more brain or sense than a
fellow that gathers up seeds that are spilt in a market, or one that hath a
vain and empty sound without sense or reason, like a foolish mountebank ;
so slightly did those rationalists of the world think of the wisdom of heaven.
That the Son of God should veil himself in a mortal body, and sufier a dis-
graceful death in it, were things above the ken of reason.

Besides, the world had a general disesteem of the religion of the Jews,
and were prejudiced against anything that came from them. Whence the
Eomans, that used to incorporate the gods of other conquered nations in
their capitol, never moved to have the God of Israel worshipped among
them. Again, they might argue against it with much fleshly reason. Here
is a crucified God preached by a company of mean and ignorant persons ;
what reason can we have to entertain this doctrine, since the Jews, who (as
they tell us) had the prophecies of him, did not acknowledge him? Surely,
had there been such predictions, they would not have crucified, but crowned
their king, and expected from him the conquest of the earth under their power !
What reason have we to entertain him, whom his own nation (among whom
he lived, with whom he conversed) so unanimously, by the vote of the rulers
as well as the rout, rejected ? It was impossible to conquer minds possessed
with so many errors, and applauding themselves in their own reason, and
to render them capable of receiving revealed truths without the influence of
a divine power.

Secondly, It was contrary to the customs of the world. The strength of
custom in most men surmounts the strength of reason, and men commonly
are so wedded to it, that they will be sooner divorced from anything than
the modes and patterns received from their ancestors. The endeavouring
to change customs of an ancient standing hath begotten tumults and furious
mutinies among nations, though the change would have been much for their
advantage.

This doctrine struck at the root of the religion of the world, and the cere-
monies wherein they had been educated from their infancy, delivered to them
from their ancestors, confirmed by the customary observance of many ages,
rooted in their minds, and established by their laws. Acts xviii. 13, ' This
fellow persuadeth us to worship God contrary to the law,' against customs,
to which they ascribed the happiness of their states, and the prosperity of
their people ; and would put in the place of this religion they would abolish,
a new one instituted by a man whom the Jews had condemned, and put to
death upon a cross as an impostor, blasphemer, and seditious person.

It was a doctrine that would change the customs of the Jews, who were
entrusted with the oracles of God. It would bury for ever their ceremonial
rites, delivered to them by Moses from that God who had with a mighty
hand brought them out of Egypt, consecrated their law with thunders and

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 153

lightnings from mount Sinai at the time of its publication, backed it with
severe sanctions, confirmed it by many miracles, both in the wilderness and
their Canaan, and had continued it for so many hundred years. They could
not but remember how they had been ravaged by other nations, and judg-
ments sent upon them when they neglected and slighted it, and with what
great success they were followed when they valued and observed it, and how
they had abhorred the author of this new religion, who had spoken slightly
of their traditions, till they put him to death with infamy. Was it an easy
matter to divorce them from that worship, upon which were entailed (as
they imagined) their peace, plenty, and glory, things of the dearest regard
with mankind ? The Jews were no less devoted to their ceremonial tradi-
tions, than the heathen were to their vain superstitions.

This doctrine of the gospel was of that nature, that the state of religion
all over the earth must be overturned by it ; the wisdom of the Greeks must
veil to it, the idolatry of the people must stoop to it, and the profane customs
of men must moulder under the weight of it. Was it an easy(matter for the
pride of nature to deny a customary wisdom, to entertain a new doctrine
against the authority of their ancestors, to inscribe folly upon that which
hath made them admired by the rest of the world ? Nothing can be of
greater esteem with men than the credit of their lawgivers and founders, the
religion of their fathers, and prosperity of themselves ; hence the minds of
men were sharpened against it. The Greeks, the wisest nation, slighted it
as foolish ; the Jews, the religious nation, stumbled at it, as contrary to
the received interpretations of ancient prophecies, and carnal conceits of an
earthly glory. The dimmest eye may behold the difficulty to change
custom, a second nature ; it is as hard as to change a wolf into a lamb, to level
a mountain, stop the course of the sun, or change the inhabitants of Africa
into the colour of Europe. Custom dips men in as durable a dye as nature.
The difiiculties of carrying it on against the divine religion of the Jew, and
rooted customs of the Gentiles, were unconquerable by any but an almighty
power. And in this the power of God hath appeared wonderfully.

Thirdly, It was contrary to the sensuality of the world, and the lust of
the flesh. How much the Gentiles were overgrown with base and unworthy
lusts at the time of the publication of the gospel, needs no other memento
than the apostle's discourse, Rom. i. As there was no error but prevailed
upon their minds, so there was no brutish affection but was wedded to their
hearts. The doctrine proposed to them was not easy ; it flattered not the
sense, but checked the stream of nature. It thundered down those three
great engines whereby the devil had subdued the world to himself, ' the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.' Not only the most
sordid affections of the flesh, but the more refined gratifications of the
mind ; it stripped nature both of devil and man, of what was commonly
esteemed great and virtuous. That which was the root of their fame, and
satisfaction of their ambition, was struck at by this axe of the gospel. The
first article of it ordered them to deny themselves, not to presume upon
their own worth ; to lay their understandings and wills at the foot of the
cross, and resign them up to one newly crucified at Jerusalem. Honours
and wealth were to be despised, flesh to be tamed, the cross to be borne,
enemies to be loved, revenge not to be satisfied, blood to be spilled, and
torments to be endured for the honour of one they never saw nor ever before
heard of, who was preached with the circumstances of a shameful death,
enough to afiright them from the entertainment ; and the report of a resur-
rection and glorious ascension were things never heard of by them before,
and unknown in the world, that would not easily enter into the belief of

154 chaenock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

men. The cross, disgrace, self-denial, were only discoursed of in order to
the attainment of an invisihle world, and an unseen reward, which none of
their predecessors ever returned to acqanint them with ; a patient death,
contrary to the pride of nature, was published as the way to happiness and
a blessed immortality. The dearest lusts were to be pierced to death for
the honour of this new lord. Other religions brought wealth and honour ;
this struck them off from such expectations, and presented them with no
promise of anything in this life but a prospect of misery, except those
inward consolations to which before they had been utter strangers, and had
never experimented. It made them to depend not upon themselves, but
upon the sole grace of God. It decried all natural, all moral idolatry, things
as dear to men as the apple of their eyes. It despoiled them of whatsoever
the mind, will, and affections of men naturally lay claim to and glory in.
It pulled self up by the roots, unmanned carnal man, and debased the prin-
ciple of honour and self-satisfaction, which the world counted at that time
noble and brave. In a word, it took them off from themselves, to act like
creatures of God's framing, to know no more than he would admit them,
and do no more than he did command them. How difficult must it needs
be to reduce men, that placed all their happiness in the pleasures of this life,
from their pompous idolatry and brutish affections, to this mortifying religion.
What might the world say ? Here is a doctrine will render us a company
of puling animals. Farewell generosity, bravery, sense of honour, courage,
in enlarging the bounds of our country, for an ardent charity to the bitterest
of our enemies. Here is a religion will rust our swords, canker our arms,
dis-spirit what we have hitherto called virtue, and annihilate what hath been
esteemed worthy and comely among mankind. Must we change conquest
for suffering, the increase of our reputation for self-denial, the natural
sentiment of self-preservation for affecting a dreadful death ? How im-
possible was it that a crucified Lord and a crucifying doctrine should be
received in the world, without the mighty operation of a divine power upon
the hearts of men ! And in this also the almighty power of God did notably
shine forth.

[2. J Divine power appeared in the instruments employed for the publish-
ing and propagating the gospel ; who were.

First, Mean and worthless in themselves ; not noble and dignified with
an earthly grandeur, but of a low condition, meanly bred ; so far from any
splendid estates, that they possessed nothing but their nets, without any
credit and reputation in the world, without comeliness and strength, as unfit
to subdue the world by preaching, as an army of hares were to conquer it
by war. Not learned doctors, bred up at the feet of the famous rabbins at
Jerusalem, whom Paul calls ' the princes of the world,' 1 Cor. ii. 8, nor
nursed up in the school of Athens, under the philosophers and orators of the
time ; not the wise men of Greece, but the fishermen of Galilee, naturally
skilled in no language but their own, and no more exact in that than those
of the same condition in any other nation ; ignorant of everything but the
language of their lakes and their fishing trade, except Paul, called some time
after the rest to that employment ; and after the descent of the Spirit, they
were ignorant and unlearned in everything but the doctrine they were com-
manded to publish, for the council before whom they were summoned
proved them to be so, which increased their wonder at them, Acts iv. 13.
Had it been published by a voice from heaven that twelve poor men, taken
out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the
world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all the
reason of men ; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them.

Job XX YI. 14.] god's powee. 155

They published this doctrine in Jerusalem, and quickly spread it over the
greatest part of the world. Folly outwitted wisdom, and weakness over-
powered strength. The conquest of the east by Alexander was not so
admirable as the enterprise of these poor men. He attempted his conquest
with the hands of a warlike nation, though indeed but a small number of
thirty thousand against multitudes, many hundred thousands of the enemies,
yet an effeminate enemy ; a people inured to slaughter and victory attacked
great numbers, but enfeebled by luxury and voluptuousness. Besides,
he was bred up to such 'enterprises, had a learned education under the
best philosopher, and a military education under the best commander, and
a natural courage to animate him. These instruments had no such
advantage from nature ; the heavenly ' treasure was placed in those earthen
vessels,' as Gideon's lamps in empty pitchers, Judges vii. 16 ; ' that the
excellency ' or hyjierhole, ' of the power might be of God,' 2 Cor. iv. 7, and
the strength of his arm be displayed in the infirmity of the instruments.
They were destitute of earthly wisdom, and therefore despised by the Jews
and derided by the Gentiles ; the publishers were accounted madmen, and
the embracers fools. Had they been men of known natural endowments,
the power of God had been veiled under the gifts of the creature.

Secondly, Therefore a divine power suddenly spirited them, and fitted
them for so great a work. Instead of ignorance they had the knowledge of
the tongues, and they that were scarce well skilled in their own dialect, were
instructed on the sudden to speak the most floui-ishing languages of the
world, and discourse to the people of several nations the 'gi-eat things of
God,' Acts ii. 11. Though they were not enriched with any worldly wealth,
and possessed nothing, yet they were so sustained that they wanted nothing
in any place where they came ; a table was spread for them in the midst of
their bitterest enemies. Their fearfulness was turned into courage, and they
that a few days before skulked in corners for fear of the Jews, John xx. 19,
speak boldly in the name of that Jesus, whom they had seen put to death by the
power of the rulers and the fury of the people ; they reproach them with
the murder of their master, and outbrave that great people in the midst of
their temple, with the glory of that person they had so lately crucified. Acts
ii. 23, iii. 13. Peter, that was not long before qualmed at the presence of
a maid, was not daunted at the presence of the council, that had their hands
yet reeking with the blood of his master, but being filled with the Holy
Ghost, seems to dare the power of the priests and Jewish governors, and is
as confident in the council chamber as he had been cowardly in the high
priest's hall. Acts iv. 9, &c., the efficacy of grace triumphing over the fear-
fulness of nature. Whence should this ardour and zeal to propagate a
doctrine that had already borne the scars of the people's fury be, but from a
mighty power which changed those hares into lions, and stripped them of
their natural cowardice to clothe them with a divine courage, making them
in a moment both wise and magnanimous, alienating them from any consul-
tations with flesh and blood ? As soon as ever the Holy Ghost came upon
them * as a mighty rushing wind,' they move up and down for the interest
of God, as fish after a great clap of thunder are roused, and move more
nimbly on the top of the water ; therefore, that which did so fit them for
this undertaking is called by the title of ' power from on high,' Luke xxiv. 49.

[3.] The divine power appears in the means whereby it was propagated.

First, By means different from the methods of the world. Not by force
of arms, as some religions have taken root in the world. Mahomet's horse
hath trampled upon the heads of men, to imprint an Alcoran in their brains,
and robbed men of their goods to plant their religion. But the apostles

156 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

bore not this doctrine through the world upon the points of their swords ;
they presented a bodily death where they would bestow an immortal life ;
they employed not troops of men in a warlike posture, which had been
possible for them after the gospel was once spread ; they had no ambition
to subdue men unto themselves, but to God ; they coveted not the posses-
sions of others ; designed not to enrich themselves ; invaded not the rights
of princes, nor the liberties and properties of the people ; they rifled them
not of their estates, nor scared them into this religion by a fear of losing
their worldly happiness. The arguments they used would naturally drive
them from an entertainment of this doctrine, rather than allure them to be
proselytes to it. Their design was to change their hearts, not their govern-
ment ; to wean them from the love of the world to a love of a Redeemer ;
to remove that which would ruin their souls. It was not to enslave them,
but ransom them ; they had a ' warfare,' but not with ' carnal weapons,'
but such as were ' mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds,'
2 Cor. X. 4 ; they used no weapons but the doctrine they preached. Others
that have not gained conquests by the edge of the sword and the stratagems
of war, have extended their opinions to others by the strength of human
reason and the insinuations of eloquence. But the apostles had as little
flourish in their tongues as edge upon their swords ; their preaching was
' not with the enticing words of man's wisdom,' 1 Cor. ii. 4 ; their presence
was mean, and their discourses without varnish ; their doctrine was plain,
a crucified Christ, a doctrine unlaced, ungarnished, untoothsome to the
world ; but they had the demonstration of the Spirit, and a mighty power
for their companion in the work. The doctrine they preached, viz., the
death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, are called the * powers,' not of
this world, but ' of the world to come,' Heb. vi. 5. No less than a super-
natural power could conduct them in this attempt, with such weak methods
in human appearance.

Secondly, Against all the force, power, and wit of the world. The divi-
sions in the eastern empire, and the feeble and consuming state of the
western, contributed to Mahomet's success.* But never was Rome in a
more flourishing condition ; learning, eloquence, wisdom, strength, were at
the highest pitch. Never was there a more diligent watch against any
innovations ; never was that state governed by more severe and suspicious
princes than at the time when Tiberius and Nero held the reins. No time
seemed to be more unfit for the entrance of a new doctrine, than that age
wherein it begun' to be first published ; never did any religion meet with
that opposition from men. Idolatry hath been often settled without any
contest : but this hath sufi'ered the same fate with the institutor of it, and
endured the contradictions of sinners against itself. And those that pub-
lished it were not only without any worldly prop, but exposed themselves to
the hatred and fury, to the racks and tortures, of the strongest powers on
earth. It never set foot in any place, but the country was in an uproar,
Acts xix. 28 ; swords were drawn to destroy it ; laws made to suppress it ;
prisons provided for the professors of it ; fires kindled to consume them,
and executioners had a perpetual employment to stifle the progress of it.

Rome in the conquest of countries changed not the religion, rites, and
modes of their worship. They altered their civil government, but left them
to the liberty of their religion, and many times joined with them in the
worship of their peculiar gods ; and sometimes imitated them at Rome, in-
stead of abolishing them in the cities they had subdued. But all their
councils were assembled, and their force was banded ' against the Lord and
* Daille, Serm. xv. p. 57.

Job XXVI. 14. J god's power. 157

against bis Christ,' and that city that kindly received all manner of super-
stitions, hated this doctrine with an irreconcileable hatred. It met with
reproaches from the wise, and fury from the potentates ; it was derided by
the one as the greatest folly, and persecuted by the other as contrary to
God and mankind ; the one were afraid to lose their esteems by the doctrine,
and the other to lose their authority by a sedition they thought a change of
religion would introduce. The Romans, that had been conquerors of the
earth, feared intestine commotions, and the falling asunder the links of
their empire. Scarce any of their first emperors but had their swords dyed
red in the blood of the Christians. The flesh with all its lusts, the world
with all its flatteries, the statesmen with all their craft, and the mighty with
all their strength, joined together to extirpate it. Though many members
were taken off by the fires, yet the church not only lived, but flourished in
the furnace. Converts were made by the death of martyrs, and the flames
which consumed their bodies, were the occasion of firing men's hearts with
a zeal for the profession of it. Instead of being extinguished, the doctrine
shone more bright, and multiplied under the sickles that were employed to
cut it down. God ordered every circumstance so, both in the persons that
published it, the means whereby, and the time when, that nothing but his
power might appear in it, without anything to dim and darken it.

[4.j The divine power was conspicuous in the great success it had under
all these difficulties. Multitudes were prophesied of to embrace it ; whence
the prophet Isaiah, after the prophecy of the death of Christ, Isa. liii., calls
upon the church to ' enlarge her tents, and lengthen out her cords' to re-
ceive those multitudes of children that should call her mother, Isa. liv. 2, 3,
for she should ' break forth on the right hand and on the left, and her seed
should inherit the Gentiles.' The idolaters and persecutors should lift their
names in the muster-roll of the church.

Presently after the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven upon the
apostles, you find the hearts of three thousand melted by a plain declaration
of this doctrine, who were a little before so far from having a favourable
thought of it, that some of them at least, if not all, had expressed their rage
against it, in voting for the condemning and crucifying the author of it. Acts
ii. 41, 42. But in a moment they were so altered, that they breathe out
affections instead of fury ; neither the respect they had to their rulers, nor
the honour they bore to their priests, nor the derisions of the people, nor
the threatening of punishment, could stop them from owning it in the face
of multitudes of discouragements. How wonderful is it that they should so
soon, and by such small means, pay a reverence to the servants, who had
none for the master ! that they should hear them with patience, without the
same clamour against them as against Christ, Crucify them, crucify them !
but that their hearts should so suddenly be inflamed with devotion to him
dead, whom they so much abhorred when living. It had gained footing not
in a corner of the world, but in the most famous cities ; in Jerusalem, where
Christ had been crucified ; in Antioch, where the name of Christians first
began ; in Corinth, a place of ingenious arts ; and Ephesus, the seat of a
noted idol. In less than twenty years there was never a province of the
Roman empire, and scarce any part of the known world, but was stored with
the professors of it. Rome, that was the metropolis of the idolatrous world,
had multitudes of them sprinkled in every corner, whose ' faith was spoken
of throughout the world,' Rom. i. 8. The court of Nero, that monster of
mankind, and the cruellest and sordidest tyrant that ever breathed, was not
empty of sincere votaries to it ; there were ' saints in Caesar's house,' while
Paul was under Nero's chain, Philip, iv. And it maintained its standing,

158 chaenock's woeks. [Job XXVI. 14.

and flourished in spite of all the force of hell 250 years before any sovereign
prince espoused it.

The potentates of the earth had conquered the lands of men, and subdued
their bodies ; these vanquished hearts and wills, and brought the most be-
loved thoughts under the yoke of Christ. So much did this doctrine over-
master the consciences of its followers, that they rejoiced more at their yoke
than others at their hberty, and counted it more a glory to die for the
honour of it, than to live in the profession of it. Thus did our Saviour
reign and gather subjects in the midst of his enemies ; in which respect, in
the first discovery of the gospel, he is described as a mighty conqueror, Rev.
vi. 2, and still conquering in the greatness of his strength.

How great a testimony of his power is it, that from so small a cloud
should rise so glorious a sun, that should chase before it the darkness and
power of hell, triumph over the idolatry, superstition and profaneness of
the world ! This plain doctrine vanquished the obstinacy of the Jews,
baffled the understanding of the Greeks, humbled the pride of the grandees,
threw the devil not only out of bodies but hearts, tore up the foundation
of his empire, and planted the cross where the devil had for many ages
before established his standard. How much more than a human force is
illustrious in this whole conduct ! Nothing in any age of the world can
parallel it, it being so much against the methods of nature, the disposition
of the world, and (considering the resistance against it) seems to surmount
even the work of creation. Never were there in any profession such multi-
tudes, not of bedlams, but men of sobriety, acuteness, and wisdom, that ex-
posed themselves to the fury of the flames, and challenged death in the most
terrifying shapes for the honour of this doctrine.

To conclude ; this should be often meditated upon to form our under-
standings to a full assent to the gospel, and the truth of it ; the want of
which consideration of power, and the customariness of an education in the
outward profession of it, is the ground of all the profaneness under it, and
apostasy from it, the disesteem of the truth it declares, and the neglect of
the duties it enjoins. The more we have a prospect and sense of the im-
pressions of divine power in it, the more we shall have a reverence of the
divine precepts.

(3.) The third thing is, the power of God appears in the application of
redemption, as well as in the person redeeming, and the pubhcation and pro-
pagation of the doctrine of redemption.

[1.] In the planting grace.

[2.] In the pardon of sin.

[3.] In the preserving grace.

[1.] In the planting grace. There is no expression which the Spirit of
God hath thought fit in Scripture to resemble this work to, but argues the
exerting of a divine power for the eff'ecting of it. When it is expressed by
liaht, it is as much as the power of God in creating the sun ; when hj re-
generation, it is as much as the power of God in forming an infant, and
fashioning all the parts of a man ; when it is called resurrection, it is as
much as the rearing of the body again out of putrefied matter ; when it is
called creation, it is as much as erecting a comely world out of mere nothing,
or an inform and uncomely mass. As we could not contrive the death of
Christ for our redemption, so we cannot form our souls to the acceptation
of it ; the infinite efiicacy of grace is as necessary for the one, as the infinite
wisdom of God was for laying the platform of the other.

It is by his power we have whatsoever pertains to godliness as well as

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power, 159

life, 2 Peter i. 3. He puts his fingers upon the handle of the lock, and
turns the heart to what point he pleases ; the action whereby he performs
this is expressed by a word of force : Col. i. 13, siivsaro, ' He hath snatched
us fi-om the power of darkness ;' the action whereby it is performed mani-
fests it. In reference to this power, it is called creation, which is a produc-
tion from nothing ; and conversion is a production from something more
uncapable of that state, than mere nothing is of being. There is a greater
distance between the terms of sin and righteousness, corruption and grace,
than between the terms of nothing and being ; the greater the distance is,
the more power is required to the producing anything. As in miracles,
the miracle is the greater where the change is the greater ; and the change
is the greater where the distance is the greater. As it was a more signal
mark of power to change a dead man to life, than to change a sick man to
health, so that the change here being from a term of a greater distance, is
more powerful than the creation of heaven and earth. Therefore, whereas
creation is said to be wrought by his hands, and the heavens by his fingers,
or his word, conversion is said to be wrought by his arm, Isa. liii. 1. In
creation we had an earthly, by conversion a heavenly state ; in creation,
nothing is changed into something ; in conversion, hell is transformed into
heaven, which is more than the turning nothing into a glorious angel. In
that thanksgiving of our Saviour for the revelation of the knowledge of him-
self to babes, the simple of the world, he gives the title to his Father, of
' Lord of heaven and earth,' Mat. xi. 25, intimating it to be an act of his
creative and preserving power ; that power whereby he formed heaven and
earth, hath preserved the standing and governed the motions of all creatures
from the beginning of the world.

It is resembled to the most magnificent act of divine power that God ever
put forth, viz., that in the resurrection of our Saviour, Eph. i. 19, wherein
there was more than an ordinary impression of might. It is not so small a
power as that whereby we speak with tongues, or whereby Christ opened
the mouths of the dumb and the ears of the deaf, or unloosed the cords of
death from a person. It is not that power whereby our Saviour wrought
those stupendous miracles when he was in the world ; but that power which
wrought a miracle that amazed the most knowing angels as well as ignorant
man, the taking off" the weight of the sin of the world from our Saviour,
and advancing him in his human nature to rule over the angelical host,
making him head of principalities and powers ; as much as to say, as great
as all that power which is displayed in our redemption, from the first founda-
tion to the last line in the superstructure. It is therefore often set forth
with an emphasis, as * excellency of power,' 2 Cor. iv. 7, and glorious power,
2 Peter, i. 3. ' To glory and virtue,' we translate it ; but it is din ho^rn,
' through glory and virtue,' that is, by a glorious virtue or strength.

The instrument whereby it is wrought is dignified with the title of power.
The gospel, which God useth in this great affair, is called ' the power of
God to salvation,' Rom. i. 16, and the ' rod of his strength,' Ps. ex. 2.
And the day of the gospel's appearance in the heart is emphatically called,
' the day of power,' verse 8, wherein he brings down strongholds and
towering imaginations. And therefore the angel Gabriel, which name signi-
fies the power of God, was always sent upon those messages which concerned
the gospel, as to Daniel, Zacharias, Mary.* The gospel is the power of
God in a way of instrumentality, but the almightiness of God is the principle
in a way of efiiciency. The gospel is the sceptre of Christ, but the power
of Christ is the mover of that sceptre. The gospel is not as a bare word
* Grotius in Luke i. 19.

160 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

spoken, and proposing the thing, but as backed with a higher efficacy of
grace ; as the sword doth instrumeutally cut, but the arm that wields it gives
the blow, and makes it successful in the stroke. But this gospel is the power
of God, because he edgeth this by his own power, to surmount all resistance,
and vanquish the greatest malice of that man he designs to work upon.

The power of God is conspicuous.

First, In turning the heart of man against the strength of the inclinations
of nature. In the forming of man of the dust of the ground, as the matter
contributed nothing to the action whereby God formed it, so it had no
principle of resistance contrary to the design of God. But in converting
the heart, there is not only wanting a principle of assistance from him in
this work, but the whole strength of corrupt nature is alarmed to combat
against the power of his grace. When the gospel is presented, the under-
standing is not only ignorant of it, but the will perverse against it ; the one
doth not relish, and the other not esteem the excellency of the object. The
carnal wisdom in the mind contrives against it, and the rebellious will puts
the orders in execution against the counsel of God, which requires the in-
vincible power of God to enlighten the dark mind, to know what it slights ;
and the fierce will, to embrace what it loathes. The stream of nature can-
not be turned, but by a power above nature. It is not all the created power
in heaven and earth can change a swine into a man, or a venomous toad
into a holy and illustrious angel. Yet this work is not so great in some
respect, as the stilling the fierceness of nature, the silencmg the swelling
waves in the heart, and the casting out those brutish affections which are
born and grow up with us. There would be no, or far less, resistance in a
mere animal to be changed into a creature of a higher rank, than there is
in a natural man to be turned into a serious Christian.

There is in every natural man a stoutness of heart, a stiff-neck unwilling-
ness to good, forwardness to evil. Infinite power quells this stoutness,
demolisheth these strongholds, turns this wild ass in her course, and routs
those armies of turbulent nature against the grace of God. To stop the
floods of the sea is not such an act of power as to turn the tide of the heart.
This power hath been employed upon every convert in the world. What
would you say, then, if you knew all the channels in which it hath run since
the days of Adam ? If the alteration of one rocky heart into a pool of water
be a wonder of power, what then is the calming and sweetening by his word
those ' one hundred forty-four thousand of the tribes of Israel,' and that
numberless multitude of all nations and people that shall stand before the
throne, Rev. vii. 9, which were all naturally so many raging seas ? Not one
converted soul, from Adam to the last that shall be in the end of the world,
but is a trophy of the divine conquest. None were pure volunteers, nor
listed themselves in his service till he put forth his strong arm to draw them
to him. No man's understanding but was chained with darkness, and fond
of it ; no man but had corruption in his will, which was dearer to him than
anything else which could be proposed for his true happiness. These
things are most evident in Scripture and experience.

Secondly, As it is wrought against the inclinations of nature, so against a
multitude of corrupt habits rooted in the souls of men. A distemper in its
first invasion may more easily be cured than when it becomes chronical and
inveterate. The strength of a disease, or the complication of many, magni-
fies the power of the physician and efficacy of the medicine that tames and
expels it. What power is that which hath made men stoop, when natural
habits have been grown giants by custom, when the putrefaction of nature
hath engendered a multitude of worms, when the ulcers are many and de-

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 161

plorable, when many cords, wherewith God would have bound the sinner,
have been broken, and (hke Samson) the wicked heart hath gloried in its
strength, and grown more proud that it hath stood Uke a strong fort against
those batteries under which others have fallen flat.

Every proud thought, every evil habit captivated, serves for matter of
triumph to the power of God, 2 Cor. x. 5. What resistance will a multi-
tude of them make, when one of them is enough to hold the faculty under
its dominion, 'and intercept its operations ! So many customary habits, so
many old natures, so many different strengths added to nature, every one of
them standing as a barricado against the way of grace ; all the errors the
understanding is possessed with think the gospel folly, all the vices the will
is filled with count it the fetter and band. Nothing so contrary to man as
to be thought a fool ; nothing so contrary to man as to enter into slavery.
It is no easy matter to plant the cross of Christ upon a heart guided by
many principles against the truth of it, and biassed by a world of wickedness
against the holiness of it. Nature renders a man too feeble and indisposed,
and custom renders a man more weak and unwilling to change his hue, Jer.
xiii. 23. To dispossess man, then, of his self-esteem and self-excellency, to
make room for God in the heart where there was none but for sin, as dear to
him as himself, to hurl down the pride of nature, to make stout imagina-
tions stoop to the cross, to make desires of self-advancement sink under a
zeal for the glorifying of God and an over-ruling design for his honour, is
not to be ascribed to any but an outstretched arm wielding the sword of the
Spirit. To have a heart full of the fear of God, that was just before fiUed
with a contempt of him ; to have a sense of his power, an eye to his glory,
admiring thoughts of his wisdom, a faith in his truth, that had lower
thoughts of him and all his perfections than he had of a creature ; to have a
hatred of his habitual lusts, that had brought him in much sensitive plea-
sure ; to loathe them as much as he loved them, to cherish the duties he
hated ; to live by faith in, and obedience to, the Redeemer, who was before
80 heartily under the conduct of Satan and self; to chase the acts of sin
from his members, and the pleasing thoughts of sin from his mind ; to make
a stout wretch willingly fall down, crawl upon the ground, and adore that
Saviour whom before he out-dared, is a triumphant act of infinite power that
can ' subdue all things to itself,' and break those multitude of locks and
bolts that were upon us.

Thirdly, Against a multitude of temptations and interests. The tempta-
tions rich men have in this world are so numerous and strong that the
entrance of one of them into the kingdom of heaven, that is, the entertain-
ment of the gospel, is made by our Saviour an impossible thing with men,
and procurable only by the power of God, Luke xviii. 24-26. The divine
strength only can separate the world from the heart, and the heart from the
world. There must be an incomprehensible power to chase away the devil,
that had so long so strong a footing in the affections, to render the soil he
had sown with so many tares and weeds capable of good grain ; to make
spirits that had found the sweetness of worldly prosperity, wrapped up all
their happiness in it, and not only bent down, but (as it were) buried in
earth and mud, to be loosened from those beloved cords, to disrelish the
earth for a crucified Christ, I say this must be the effect of an almighty
power.

Fourthly, The manner of conversion shews no less the power of God.
There is not only a resistible force used in it, but an agi'eeable sweetness!
The power is so efficacious, that nothing can vanquish it, and so sweet, that
none did ever complain of it. The almighty virtue displays itself invincibly,

VOL. II. li

162 charnock's works. [Job XX"\T!. 14.

yet without constraint, compelling the will without offering violence to it,
and making it cease to be will : not forcing it, but changing it ; not drag-
ging it, but drawing it ; making it will where before it nilled ; removing the
corrupt nature of the will without invading the created nature and rights of
the faculty ; not working in us against the physical nature of the will, but
♦working to will,' Phil. ii. 13. This work is therefore called creation,
resurrection, to shew its irresistible power ; it is called illumination, per-
suasion, drawing, to shew the suitableness of its efficacy to the nature of the
human faculties. It is a drawing with cords, which testifies an invincible
strength; but with 'cords of love,' which testifies a delightful conquest. It
is hard to determine whether it be more powerful than sweet, or more sweet
than powerful. It is no mean part of the power of God to twist together
victory and pleasure ; to give a blow as delightful as strong, as pleasing to
the sufferer as it is sharp to the sinner.

[2.] The power of God in the application of redemption is evident in the
pardoning a sinner.

First, In the pardon itself. The power of God is made the ground of his
patience ; or the reason why he is patient is because he would shew his
power, Eom. ix. 22, It is a part of magnanimity to pass by injuries. As
weaker stomachs cannot concoct the tougher food, so weak minds cannot
digest the harder injuries. He that passes over a wrong is superior to his
adversary that does it. When God speaks of his own name as merciful, he
speaks first of himself as powerful: Exod. xxxiv. 6, The Lord, the Lord
God, that is, the Lord, the strong Lord, Jehovah, the strong Jehovah. ' Let
the power of my Lord be great,' saith Moses, when he prays for the forgive-
ness of the people (Numb. xiv. 17, ■j-^\/u^/itu, be exalted ; Sept., HD,
strength, &c.). The word Jigdal is written with a great joe/, or Sijod above
the other letters. The power of God in pardoning is advanced beyond an
ordinary strain, beyond the creative strength. In the creation, he had
power over the creatures ; in this, power over himself. In creation, not
himself, but the creatures, were the object of his power; in that, no attri-
bute of his nature could article against his design. In the pardon of a
sinner, after many overtures made to him and refused by him, God exer-
ciseth a power over himself; for the sinner hath dishonoured God, pro-
voked his justice, abused his goodness, done injury to all those attributes
which are necessary to his relief. It was not so in creation ; nothing was in-
capable of disobliging God itova. bringing it into being. The dust, which was
the matter of Adam's body, needed only the extrinsic power of God to form
it into a man, and inspire it with a living soul. It had not rendered itself
obnoxious to divine justice, nor was capable to excite any disputes between
his perfections; but after the entrance of sin, and the merit of death thereby,
there was a resistance in justice to the free remission of man. God was to
exercise a power over himself, to answer his justice and pardon the sinner,
as well as a power over the creature to reduce the runaway rebel. Unless
we have recourse to the infiniteness of God's power, the infiniteness of our
guilt will weigh us down. We must consider not only that we have a mighty
guilt to press us, but a mighty God to relieve us. In the same act of his
being our righteousness, he is our strength : ' In the Lord have I righteous-
ness and strength,' Isa. xlv. 24.

Secondly, In the sense of pardon. When the soul hath been wounded
with the sense of sin, and its iniquities have stared it in the face, the raising
the soul from a despairing condition, and lifting it above those waters which
terrified it, to cast the light of comfort as well as the light of grace into a
heart covered with more than an Egj-ptian darkness, is an act of his infinite

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 163

and creating power: Isa. Ivii. 19, 'I create the fruit of the lips, peace.'
Men may wear out their lips with numbering up the promises of grace and
arguments of peace, but all will signify no more without a creative power
than if all men and angels should call to that white upon the wall to shine
as splendidly as the sun. God only can ' create Jerusalem,' and every child
of Jerusalem ' a rejoicing,' Isa. Ixv. 18. A man is no more able to apply to
himself any word of comfort under the sense of sin, than he is able to con-
vert himself, and turn the proposals of the woi'd into gracious affections in
his heart. To 'restore the joy of salvation' is in David's judgment an act
of sovereign power, equal to that of ' creating a clean heart,' Ps. li. 10, 12.
Alas ! it is a state like to that of death ; as infinite power can only raise
from natural death, so from a spiritual death, also from a comfortless death:
* In his favour there is life,' in the want of his favour there is death. The
power of God hath so placed light in the sun, that all creatures in the world,
all the torches upon earth kindled together, cannot make it day if that doth
not rise ; so all the angels in heaven and men upon earth are not competent
chirurgeons for a wounded spirit. The cure of our spiritual ulcers, and the
pouring in balm, is an act of sovereign creative power. It is more visible
in silencing a tempestuous conscience, than the power of our Saviour was in
the stilling the stormy winds and the roaring waves. As none but infinite
power can remove the guilt of sin, so none but infinite power can remove
the despairing sense of it.

[3.] This power is evident in the preserving grace. As the providence of
God is a manifestation of his power in a continued creation, so the preserva-
tion of grace is a manifestation of his power in a continued regeneration ; to
keep a nation under the yoke is an act of the same power that subdued it.
It is this that strengthens men in sufiering against the fury of hell. Col.
i. 13 ; it is this that keeps them from falling against the force of hell, the
Father's hand, John x. 29. His strength abates and moderates the violence
of temptations ; his staff sustains his people under them ; his might defeats
the power of Satan, and bruiseth him under a believer's feet. The counter-
workings of indwelling corruption, the reluctances of the flesh against the
breathings of the Spirit, the fallacy of the senses and the rovings of the mind,
have ability quickly to stifle and extinguish grace, if it were not maintained
by that powerful blast that first inbreathed it. No less power is seen in per-
fecting it, than was in planting it, 2 Peter i. 3 ; no less in fulfilling the work
of faith, than in ingrafting the word of faith, 2 Thess. i. 11.

The apostle well understood the necessity and efficacy of it in the preser-
vation of faith, as well as in the first infusion, when he expresses himself in
those terms of a greatness or hyperbole of power, his ' mighty power,' or the
' power of his might,' Eph. i. 19. The salvation he bestows, and the strength
whereby he effects it, are joined together in the prophet's song : Isa. xii. 2,
' The Lord is my strength and my salvation ; ' and, indeed, God doth more
magnify his power in continuing a believer in the world, a weak and half-
rigged vessel in the midst of so many sands whereon it might spHt, so
many rocks whereon it might dash, so many corruptions within, and so
many temptations without, than if he did immediately transport him into
heaven, and clothe him with a perfectly sanctified nature.

To conclude ; what is there, then, in the world, which is destitute of notices
of divine power ? Every creature affords us the lesson, all acts of divine
government are the marks of it. Look into the word, and the manner of
its propagation instructs us in it ; your changed natures, your pardoned
guilt, your shining comfort, your quelled corruptions, the standing of your
staggering graces, are sufficient to preserve a sense, and prevent a forgetful-

1^4 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. H.

ness of this great attribute, so necessary for our support, and conducing so
much to your comfort.

IV. Uses.

1. Of information and instruction.

(1.) If incomprehensible and infinite power belongs to the nature of God,
then Jesus Christ hath a divine nature, because the acts of power proper
to God are ascribed to him. This perfection of omnipotence doth unques-
tionably pertain to the Deity, and is an incommunicable property, and the
same with the essence of God; he therefore to whom this attribute is
ascribed is essentially God.

This is challenged by Christ in conjunction with eternity : Eev. i. 8, * I
AVQ. Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which
is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty ; ' this the Lord
Christ speaks of himself. He who was equal with God proclaims himself
by the essential title of the Godhead, part of which he repeats again, ver. 11.
And this is the person which * walks in the midst of the seven golden candle-
sticks ;' the person that ' was dead and now lives,' ver. 17, 18, which can-
not possibly be meant of the Father, the first person, who can never come
under that denomination of having been dead. Being therefore adorned
with the same title, he hath the same Deity ; and though his omnipotence
be only positively asserted, ver. 8, yet his eternity being asserted, ver. 11, 17,
it inferreth his immense power ; for he that is eternal, without limits of
time, must needs be conceived powerful, without any dash of infirmity.

Again, when he is said to be ' a child born,' and ' a Son given,' in the
same breath he is called ' the mighty God,' Isa. ix. 6. It is introduced as
a ground of comfort to the church, to preserve their hopes in the accomplish-
ment of the promises made to them before. They should not imagine him
to have only the infirmity of man, though he was veiled in the appearance
of a man ; no, they should look through the disguise of his flesh to the
might of his Godhead. The attribute of mighty is added to the title God,
because the consideration of power is most capable to sustain the drooping
church in such a condition, and to prop up her hopes ; it is upon this
account he saith of himself, that ' whatsoever things the Father doth, those
also doth the Son likewise,' John v. 19. In creation of heaven, earth, sea,
and the preservation of all creatures, the Son works with the same will,
wisdom, virtue, power, as the Father works ; not as two may concur in an
action in a difierent manner, as an agent and an instrument, a carpenter
and his tools ; but in the same manner of operation, o/xolug, which we trans-
late likewise, which doth not express so well the emphasis of the word.
There is no diversity of action between us ; what the I'ather doth, that I do
by the same power, with the same easiness in every respect ; there is the
same creative, productive, conservative power in both of us ; and that not
in one work that is done ad extra, but in all, in whatsoever the Father doth.
* In the same manner ; ' not by a delegated, but natural and essential power,
by one undivided operation and manner of working.

[l.J The creation, which is a work of omnipotence, is more than once
ascribed to him. This he doth own himself ; the creation of the earth, and
of man upon it ; the stretching out the heavens by his hands, and the form-
ing of all the host of them by his command, Isa. xlv. 12. He is not only
the Creator of Israel, the church, ver. 12, but of the whole world, and every
creature on the face of the earth, and in the glories of the heavens ; which
is repeated also, ver. 18, where, in this act of creation, he is called God
himself, and speaks of himself in the term Jehovah; and swears by himself,

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 165

ver. 23. What doth he swear ? ' That unto me every knee shall bow, and
every tongue shall swear.' Is this Christ ? Yes, if the apostle may be be-
lieved, who applies it to him, Rom. xiv. 11, to prove the appearance of all
men before the judgment- seat of Christ, whom the prophet calls, ver. 15, a
* God that hides himself,' and so he was a hidden God when obscured in our
fleshy infirmities. He was in conjunction with the Father when the sea re-
ceived his decree, and the foundations of the earth were appointed, not as a
spectator, but as an artificer, for so the word in Prov. viii. 30 signifies, as
one brought up with him ; it signifies also, ' a cunning workman,' Cant,
vii. 1. He was the east, or the sm??, from whence sprang all the light of
life and being to the creature ; so the word Dip, ver. 22, which is translated
' before his works of old,' is rendered by some, and signifies the east as well
as before ; but if it notes only his existence before, it is enough to prove his
deity.

The Scripture doth not only allow him an existence before the world, but
exalts him as the cause of the world. A thing may precede another, that is
not the cause of that which follows ; a precedency in age doth not entitle
one brother or thing the cause of another ; but our Saviour is not only
ancienter than the world, but is the Creator of the world : Heb. i. 10, 11,
Who ' laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of
his hands.' So great an elogy cannot be given to one destitute of omnipo-
tence, since the distance between being and not being is so vast a gulf that
cannot be surmounted and stepped over, but by an infinite power. He is ' the
first and the last,' that * called the generations from the beginning,' Isa.
xli. 4, and had an almighty voice to call them out of nothing ; in which
regard he is called 'the everlasting Father,' Isa. ix. 6, as being the efficient
of creation ; as God is called the Father of the rain, or as father is taken
for the inventor of an art ; as Jubal, the first framer and inventor of music,
is called ' the father of such as handle the harp,' Gen, iv. 21. And that
person is said to ' make the sea, and form the dry land by his hands,' Ps.
xcv. 5, 6, against whom we are exhorted not to * harden our hearts,' ver, 8,
which is applied to Christ by his apostle, Heb. iii, 8 ; in the 15th verse he is
called ' a great king, and ' a great God, our maker.' The places wherein
the creation is attributed to Christ, those that are the antagonists of his
deity would evade by understanding them of the new or evangeUcal, not of
the first, old, and material creation ; but what appearance is there for such
a sense ? Consider,

First, That of Heb. i. 10, 11. It is spoken of that earth and heavens
which were in the beginning of time ; it is that earth that shall perish, that
heaven that shall be folded up, that creation that shall grow old towards a
decay ; that is, only the visible and material creation. The spiritual shall
endure for ever ; it grows not old to decay, but grows up to a perfection ;
it sprouts up to its happiness, not to its detriment. The same person
creates that shall destroy, and the same world is created by him that shall
be destroyed by him, as well as it subsisted by virtue of his omnipotency.

Secondly, Can that also, Heb. i. 2, ' By whom also he made the worlds,'
speaking of Christ, bear the same plea ? It was the same person by whom
' God spake to us in these last times,' the same person which he hath ' con-
stituted heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.' And the
particle also intimates it to be a distinct act from his speaking or prophetical
office, whereby he restored and new created the world, as well as the right-
ful foundation God had to make him heir of all things. It refers, likewise,
not to the time of Christ's speaking upon earth, but to something past, and
something diff'erent from the publication of the gospel ; it is not doth rnake,

166 charnock's woeks. [Job XXVI. 14.

■which had been more likely if the apostle had meant only the new creation,
but hath made, IS.'Trolrjaiv, referring to time long since past, something done
before his appearance upon earth as a prophet. * By whom also he made
the worlds,' or ' ages,' all things subjected to or measured by time, which
must be meant, according to the Jewish phrase, of this material visible world;
so they entitled God in their liturgy, the ' Lord of ages,' that is, the Lord of
the world, and all ages and revolutions of the world, from the creation to
the last period of time. If anything were in being before this frame of
lieaven and earth, and within the compass of time, it received being and
dui-ation from the Son of God. The apostle would give an argument to
prove the equity of making him heir of all things as mediator, because he
was the framer of all things as God. He may well be the heir or Lord of
angels as well as men, who created angels as well as men. All things were
justly under his power as mediator, since they derived their existence from
him as creator. But,

Thirdly, What evasion can there be for that Col. i. 16, * By him were all
things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created
by him and for him ' ? He is said to be the creator of material and visible
things, as well as spiritual and invisible ; of things in heaven, which needed
no restoration, as well as things on earth, which were polluted by sin, and
stood in need of a new creation. How could the angels belong to the new
creation, who had never put oflf the honour and purity of the first ? Since
they never divested themselves of their original integrity, they could not be
re-invested with that which they never lost. Besides, suppose the holy
angels be one way or other reduced as parts of the new creation, as being
under the mediatory government of our Saviour, as their head, and in regard
of their confirmation by him in that happy state, in what manner shall the
devils be ranked among new creatures ? They are called principalities and
powers as well as the angels, and may come under the title of things
invisible. That they are called principalities and powers is plain : Eph.
vi. 12, *'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principali-
ties and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places.' Good angels are not there meant, for what war
have believers with them, or they with believers ? They are the guardians
of them, since Christ hath taken away the enmity between our Lord and
theirs, in whose quarrel they were engaged against us. And since the
apostle, speaking of all things created by him, expresseth it so, that it cannot
be conceived he should except anything, how come the finally impenitent
and unbelievers, which are things in earth, and visible, to be listed here in
the roll of new creatures ? None of these can be called new creatures,
because they are subjected to the government of Christ, no more than the
earth and sea, and the animals in it, are made new creatures, because they
are all under the dominion of Christ and his providential government.
Again, the apostle manifestly makes the creation he here speaks of to be the
material, and not the new creation ; for that he speaks of afterwards as a
distinct act of our Lord Jesus under the title of ' reconciliation,' Col. i. 20, 21,
which was the restoration of the world, and the satisfying for that curse that
lay upon it. His intent is here to shew, that not an angel in heaven, nor a
creature upon earth, but was placed in their several degrees of excellency by
the power of the Son of God, who, after that act of creation and the entrance
of sin, was the reconciler of the world through the blood of his cross.

Fourthly, There is another place as clear : John i. 3, * All things were
made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made.' The

Job XXVI. 14.J god's poweb. 167

creation is here ascribed to him : affirmatively, ' All things were made by
him ; ' negatively, • There was nothing made without him ;' and the words
are emphatical, oudi h, not one tJwig, excepting nothing, including invisible
things, as well as things conspicuous to sense only, mentioned in the story
of the creation, Gen. i. ; not only the entire mass, but the distinct parcels,
the smallest worm and the highest angel, owe their original to him. And if
not one thing, then the matter was not created to his bands ; and his
work consisted not only in the forming things from that matter. If that
one thing of matter were excepted, a chief thing were excepted; if not
one thing were excepted, then he created something of nothing, because
spirits, as angels and souls, are not made of any pre-existing or fore-
created matter. How could the evangelist phrase it more extensively and
comprehensively ? This is a character of omnipotency ; to create the
world, and everything in it, of nothing, requires an infinite virtue and
power. If all things were created by him, they were not created by
him as man, because himself, as man, was not in being before the creation ;
if all things were made by him, then himself was not made, himself was not
created ; and to be existent without being made, without being created, is to
be unboundedly omnipotent. And if we understand it of the new creation,
as they do that will not allow him an existence in his deity before his
humanity, it cannot be true of that ; for how could he regenerate Abraham,
make Simeon and Anna new creatures, who ' waited for the salvation of
Israel,' and form John Baptist, and fill him with the Holy Ghost, even from
the womb, Luke i. 15 (who belonged to the new creation, and was to pre-
pare the way) if Christ had not a being before him 9 The evangelist alludes
to, and explains the history of, the creation in the beginning, and acquaints
us what was meant by God said, so often, viz., the eternal Word, and
describes him in his creative power, manifested in the framing the world,
before he describes him in his incarnation, when he came to lay the founda-
tion of the restoration of the world : John i. 14, ' The Word was made flesh ;'
this Word who was with God, who was God, who made all things, and gave
being to the most glorious angels and the meanest creature without excep-
tion, this Word, in time, was made flesh.

Fifthly, The creation of things mentioned in these Scriptures cannot be
attributed to him as an instrument. As if when it is said, God created all
thingsiby him, and by him made the worlds, we were to understand the
Father" to be the agent, and the Son to be a tool in his Father's hand, as an
axe in the hand of a carpenter, or a file in the hand of a smith, or a servant
acting by command as the organ of his master. The preposition 2)er, or dia,
doth not alway signify an instrumental cause. When it is said, that the
apostle gave the Thessalonians a command ' by Jesus Christ,' 1 Thes. iv. 2,
was Christ the instrument, and not the Lord of that command the apostle
gave ? The immediate operation of Christ dwelling in the apostles, was
that whereby they gave the commands to their disciples. When we are
called by God, 1 Cor. i. 9, is he the instrumental or principal cause of our
efi"ectual vocation ? And can the will of God be the instrument of putting
Paul into the apostleship, or the sovereign cause of investing him with that
dignity, when he calls himself an apostle ' by the will of God ' ? Eph. i. 3.
And when all things are said to be through God, as well as of him, must he
be counted the instrumental cause of his own creation, counsels, and judg-
ments? Rom. xi. 36. When we ' mortify the deeds of the body through
the Spirit,' Rom. viii. 13, or keep the ' treasure of the word by the Holy
Ghost,' 2 Tim. i. 14, is the Holy Ghost of no more dignity in such acts
than instrument? Nor doth the gaining a thing by a person make him a mere

168 charkock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

instrument or inferior ; as when a man gains his right in the way of justice
against his adversary by the magistrate, is the judge inferior to the sup-
pliant ? If the Word were an instrument in creation, it must be a created
or uncreated instrument ; if created, it could not be true what the evangelist
saith, that * all things were made by him,' since himself, the principal thing,
could not be made by himself ; if uncreated, he was God, and so acted by a
divine omnipotency, which surmounts an instrumental cause. But indeed,
an instrument is impossible in creation, since it is wrought only by an act
of the divine will. Do we need any organ to an act of volition ? The efl&-
cacious will of the Creator is the cause of the original of the body of the world,
with its particular members and exact harmony ; it was formed by a word
and established by a command, Ps. xxxiii. 9 ; the beauty of the creation
stood up at the precept of his will. Nor was the Son a partial cause ; as
when many are said to build a house, one works one part, and another
frames another part. God created all things by the immediate operation of
the Son, in the unity of essence, goodness, power, wisdom; not an extrinsic,
but a connatural instrument. As the sun doth illustrate all things by his
light, and quickens all things by his heat, so God created the worlds by
Christ, as he was the brightness or splendour of his glorj^ the exact image
of his person, which follows the declaration of his making the worlds by
him, Heb. i. 3, 4, to shew that he acted not as an instrument, but one in
essential conjunction with him, as light and brightness with the sun. But
suppose he did make the world as a kind of instrument, he was then before
the world, not bounded by time, and eternity cannot well be conceived
belonging to a being without omnipotency ; he is the end as well as the
author of the creatures. Col. i. 16, not only the principle which gave them
being, but the sea into whose glory they run and dissolve themselves, which
consists not with the meanness of an instrument.

[2.] As creation, so preservation is ascribed to him : Col. i. 17, ' By him
all things consist.' As he preceded all things in his eternity, so he establishes
all things by his omnipotency, and fixes them in their several centres, that
they sink not into that nothing from whence he fetched them. By him they
flourish in their several beings, and observe the laws and orders he first
appointed. That power of his which extracted them from insensible nothing,
upholds them in their several beings with the same facility as he spake being
into them, even ' by the word of his power,' Heb. i. 8, and by one creative
continued voice called all generations from the beginning to the period of
the world, Isa. xli. 4, and causes them to flourish in their several seasons.
It is ' by him kings reign, and princes decree justice,' and all things are
confined within the limits of government ; all which are acts of an infinite
power.

[3.] Eesurrection is also ascribed to him. The body crumbled to dust,
and that dust blown to several quarters of the world, cannot be gathered in
its distinct parts, and new formed for the entertainment of the soul, without
the strength of an infinite arm. This he will do, and more ; change the vile-
ness of an earthly body into the glory of an heavenly one ; a dusty flesh
into a spiritual body, which is an argument of a power invincible, to which
all things cannot but stoop ; for it is by such an operation, which testifies
an ability to ' subdue all things to himself,' Phil. iii. 21, especially when
he works it with the same ease as he did the creation, by the power of his
voice : John v. 28, * All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall
come forth :' speaking them into a restored life from insensible dust, as he
did into being from an empty nothing. The greatest acts of power are owned
to belong to creation, preservation, resurrection. Omnipotence, therefore,

Job XXVI. 14.j god's power. 169

is his right ; and therefore a deity cannot be denied to him that inherits a
perfection essential to none but God, and impossible to be entrusted in, or
managed by, the hands of any creatures.

And this is no mean comfort to those that believe in him. He is, in re-
gard of his power, ' the horn of salvation ;' so Zacharias sings of him, Luke
i. 69. Nor could there be any more mighty found out upon whom God
could have laid our help, Ps. Ixxxix. 19. No reason, therefore, to doubt his
ability to save to the utmost, who hath the power of creation, preservation,
and resurrection in his hands. His promises must be accomplished, since
nothing can resist him. He hath power to fulfil his word, and bring all
things to a final issue, because he is almighty ; by his outstretched arm in
the deliverance of his Israel from Egypt (for it was his arm, 1 Cor. x.), he
shewed that he was able to deliver us from spiritual Egypt. The charge of
mediator to expiate sin, vanquish hell, form a church, conduct and perfect
it, are not to be effected by a person of less ability than infinite. Let this
almightiness of his be the bottom, wherein to cast and fix the anchor of
our hopes.

2. Information. Hence may be inferred the deity of the Holy Ghost.
Works of omnipotency are ascribed to the Spirit of God. By the motion
of the wings of this Spirit, as a bird over her eggs, was that rude and un-
shapen mass hatched into a comely world. Gen. i. 2 : so the word moved
properly signifies. The stars, or perhaps the angels, are meant by the
' garnishing of the heavens' in the verse before the text, were brought forth
in their comeliness and dignity, as the ornaments of the upper world, by,this
Spirit ; ' By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens.' To this Spirit Job
ascribes the formation both of the body and soul under the title of Almighty :
Job xxxiii. 4, ' The Spirit of God hath made, and the breath of the
Almighty hath given me life.' Resurrection, another work of omnipotency,
is attributed to him, Rom. viii. 11. The conception of our Saviour in the
womb ; the miracles that he wrought, were by the power of the Spirit in
him. Power is a title belonging to him, and sometimes both are put
together, 1 Thes. i. 5, and other places ; and that great power of changing
the heart, and sanctifying a polluted nature, a work greater than creation, is
frequently acknowledged in the Scripture to be the peculiar act of the Holy
Ghost. The Father, Son, Spirit, are one principle in creation, resurrection,
and all the works of omnipotence.

3. Inference from the doctrine. The blessedness of God is hence evi-
denced. If God be almighty, he can want nothing ; all want speaks weak-
ness. If he doth what he will, he cannot be miserable ; all misery consists
in those things which happen contrary to our will. There is nothing can
hinder his happiness, because nothing can resist his powder. Since he is
omnipotent, nothing can hurt him, nothing can strip him of what he hath,
of what he is.* If he can do whatsoever he will, he cannot want anything
that he wills. He is as happy, as great, as glorious, as he will ; for he hath
a perfect Uberty of will to will, and a perfect power to attain what he will :
his will cannot be restrained, nor his power mated. It would be a defect in
blessedness to will what he were not able to do. Sorrow is the result of a
want of power, with a presence of will. If he could will anything which he
could not effect, he would be miserable, and no longer God ; he can do what-
soever he pleases, and therefore can want nothing that pleases him.f He
cannot be happy, the original of whose happiness is not in himself: nothing
can be infinitely happy that is limited and bounded.

4. Hence is a ground for the immutability of God. As he is incapable of
* Sabunde, tit. 89. t ^^^^^ P^^t vi., med. 16, p. 531,

170 chaknook's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

changing his resolves, because of his infinite wisdom, so he is incapable of
being forced to any change, because of his infinite power. Being almighty,
he can be no more changed from power to weakness, than being all-wise,
he can be changed from wisdom to folly, or being omniscient, from know-
ledge to ignorance. He cannot be altered in his purposes because of his
wisdom, nor in the manner and method of his actions because of his infinite
strength. Men, indeed, when their designs are laid deepest, and their pur-
poses stand firmest, yet are forced to stand still, or change the manner of
the execution of their resolves, by reason of some outward accidents that
obstruct them in their course ; for having not wisdom to foresee future hin-
drances, they have not power to prevent them, or strength to remove them,
when they unexpectedly interpose themselves between their desire and per-
formance ; but no created power has strength enough to be a bar against
God. By the same act of his will that he resolves a thing, be can pufi" away
any impediments that seem to rise up against him. He that wants no means
to effect his purposes, cannot be checked by anything that riseth up to stand
in his way. Heaven, earth, sea, the deepest places, are too weak to resist
his will, Ps. cxxxv. 6. The purity of the angels will not, and the devil's
malice cannot, frustrate his will ; the one voluntarily obeys the beck of his
hand, and the other are vanquished by the power of it. What can make
him change his purposes, who (if he please) can dash the earth against the
heavens in the twinkling of an eye, untying the world from its centre, clap
the stars and elements together into one mass, and blow the whole creation
of men and devils into nothing. Because he is almighty, therefore he is
immutable.

6. Hence is inferred the providence of God, and his government of the
world. His power as well as his wisdom gives him a right to govern.
Nothing can equal him, therefore nothing can share the command with him ;
since all things are his works, it is fittest they should be under his order : he
that frames a work is fittest to guide and govern it. God hath the most
right to govern, because he hath knowledge to direct his power, and power
to execute the results of his wisdom. He knows what is convenient to order,
and hath strength to effect what he orders. As his power would be oppres-
sive without goodness and wisdom ; so his goodness and wisdom would be
fruitless without power. An artificer that hath lost his hands may direct,
but cannot make an engine ; a pilot that hath lost his arms may advise the
way of steerage, but cannot hold the helm ; something is wanting in him to
be a complete governor ; but since both counsel and power are infinite in
God, hence results an infinite right to govern, and an infinite fitness, because
his will cannot be resisted, his power cannot be enfeebled or diminished ;
he can quicken and increase the strength of all means as he pleases. He
can hold all things in the world together, and preserve them in those func-
tions wherein he settled them, and conduct them to those ends for which he
designed them.

Every artificer, the more excellent he is, and the more excellency of
power appears in his work, is the more careful to maintain and cherish it.
Those that deny providence do not only ravish from him the bowels of his
goodness, but strip him of a main exercise of his power, and engender in
men a suspicion of weariness and feebleness in him, as though his strength
had been spent in making them, that none is left to guide them. They
would make him headless in regard of his wisdom, and bowel-less in regard
of his goodness, and armless in regard of his strength. If he did not, or
were not able to preserve and provide for his creatures, his power in making
them would be in a great part an invisible power ; if he did not preserve

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power, 171

what he made, and govern what he preserves, it would be a kind of strange
and rude power, to make and suffer it to be dashed in pieces at the pleasure
of others. If the power of God should relinquish the world, the life of
things would be extinguished, the fabric would be confounded and fall
into a deplorable chaos. That which is composed of so many various
pieces could not maintain its union, if there was not a secret virtue binding
them together, and maintaining those varieties of links.

Well then, since God is not only so good that he cannot will anything
but what is good, so wise that he cannot err or mistake, but also so able
that he cannot be defeated or mated, he hath every way a full ability to
govern the world, where those three are infinite. The right and fitness result-
ing from thence is unquestionable ; and, indeed, to deny God this active part
of his power, is to render him weak, foolish, cruel, or all.

6. Here is a ground for the worship of God. Wisdom and power are
the grounds of the respect we give to men ; they being both infinite in God, are
the foundation of a solemn honour to be returned to him by his creatures.
If a man make a curious engine, we honour him for his skill ; if another
vanquish a vigorous enemy, we admire him for his strength ; and shall not
the efficacy of God's power in creation, government, redemption, inflame us
with a sense of the honour of his name and perfections! We admire
those princes that have vast empires, numerous armies, that have a power
to conquer their enemies, and preserve their own people in peace ; how much
more ground have we to pay a mighty reverence to God, who, without trouble
and weariness, made and manages this vast empire of the world by a word
and beck ! What sensible thoughts have we of the noise of thunder, the
power of the sun, the storms of the sea ! These things, that have no under-
standing, have struck men with such a reverence that many have adored them
as gods. What reverence and adoration doth this mighty power, joined with
an infinite wisdom in God, demand at our hands !

All religion and worship stands especially upon two pillars, goodness and
power in God ; if either of these were defective, all religion would faint
away. We can expect no entertainment with him without goodness, nor
any benefit from him without power. This God prefaceth to the command
to worship him, the benefit his goodness had contei-red upon them, and the
powerful manner of conveyance of it to them : 2 Kings xvii. 36, ' The Lord
brought you up from the land of Egypt with great power and an outstretched
arm ; him shall you fear, and him shall you worship, and to him shall you
do sacrifice.' Because this attribute is a main foundation of prayer, the
Lord's prayer is concluded with a doxology of it, ' For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory.' As he is rich, possessing all blessings, so he is
powerful to confer all blessings on us, and make them efficacious to us.
The Jews repeat many times in their prayers, some say an hundred times,
D'?'iyn "n^Q, ' The king of the world ;' it is both an awe and an encourage-
ment.* We could not without consideration of it pray in faith of success,
nay, we could not pray at all, if his power were defective to help us, and
his mercy too weak to relieve us. Who would solicit a lifeless, or lie a
prostrate suppliant to a feeble arm ! Upon this ability of God our Saviour
built his petitions : Heb. v. 7, ' He offered up strong cries unto him that
was able to save him from death.' Abraham's faith hung upon the same
string, Rom. iv. 21, and the captive church supplicates God to act ' ac-
cording to the greatness of his power,' Ps. Ixxix. 11. In all our addresses,
this is to be eyed and considered, God is able to help, to relieve, to

* Capel in Tim. L 17.

172 charnock's woeks. [Job XXVI. 14.

ease me, let my misery be never so great, and my strength never so weak.
' If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean,' was the consideration the leper had
when he came to worship Christ, Mat. viii.'^2 ; he was clear in his power,
and therefore worshipped him, though he was not equally clear in his will. All
worship is shot wrong that is not directed to, and conducted by, the thoughts
of this attribute whose assistance we need. When we beg the pardon of
our sins, we should eye mercy and power ; when we beg his righting us in
any case where we are unjustly oppressed, we do not eye righteousness
without power ; when we plead the performance of his promise, we do not
regard his faithfulness only without the prop of his power. As power ushers
in all the attributes of God in their exercise aud manifestation in the world,
so should it be the butt our eyes should be fixed upon in all our acts of wor-
ship ; as without his power his other attributes would be useless, so without
apprehensions of his power our prayers will be faithless and comfortless. The
title in the Lord's prayer directs us to a prospect both of his goodness and
power ; his goodness in the word Father, his greatness, excellency, and
power in the word heaven. The heedless consideration of the infiniteness
of this perfection roots up piety in the midst of us, and makes as so care-
less in worship. Did we more think of that power that raised the world out
of nothing, that orders all creatures by an act of his will, that performed so
great an exploit as that of our redemption, whenmasterless sin had triumphed
over the world, we should give God the honour and adoration which so great
an excellency challengeth and deserves at our hands, though we ourselves
had not been the work of his hands, or the monuments of his strength. How
could any creature engross to itself that reverence from us which is due to
the powerful Creator, of whom it comes infinitely short in strength as well
as wisdom !

^ 7. From this we have a ground for the belief of the resurrection. God
aims at the glory of his power, as well as the glory of any other attribute.
Moses else would not have culled out this as the main argument in his
pleading with God for the sheathing the sword, which he began to draw out
against them in the wilderness : Num. xiv. 16, ' The nations will say. Be-
cause the Lord was not able to bring these people into the land which he
sware to them,' &c. As the finding out the particulars of the dust of our
bodies discovers the vastness of his knowledge, so to raise them will mani-
fest the glory of his power as much as creation. Bodies that have mouldered
away into multitudes of atoms, been resolved into the elements, passed
through varieties of changes, been sometimes the matter to lodge the form
of a plant, or been turned into the substance of a fish or fowl, or vapoured
up into a cloud, and been part of that matter which hath compacted a
thunder-bolt ; disposed of in places far distant, scattered by the winds,
swallowed and concocted by beasts : for these to be called out from their
different places of abode to meet in one body, and be restored to their former
consistency in a marriage union, ' in the twinkling of an eye,' 1 Cor. xv. 52,
it is a consideration that may justly amaze us, and our shallow understand-
ings are too feeble to comprehend it. But is it not credible, since all the
disputes against it may be silenced by reflections on infinite power, which
nothing can oppose, for which nothing can be esteemed too difiicult to efiiect,
which doth not imply a contradiction in itself? It was no less amazing to
the blessed virgin to hear a message that she should conceive a son with-
out knowing a man ; but she is quickly answered by the angel, with a No-
thing is impossible to God, Luke i. 34, 87. The distinct parts of our bodies
cannot be hid from his all-seeing eye, wherever they are lodged, and in all the
changes they pass through, as was discovered when the omniscience of God

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 173

was handled ; shall, then, the collection of them together be too hard for his
invincible power and strength, and the uniting all those parts into a body,
with new dispositions to receive their several souls, be too big and bulky for
that power which never yet was acquainted with any bar ? Was not the
miracle of our Saviour's multiplying the loaves, suppose it had not been by
a new creation, but a collection of grain from several parts, very near as
stupendous as this ? Had any one of us been the only creature made just
before the matter of the world, and beheld that inform chaos, covered with
a thick darkness, mentioned Gen. i. 2, would not the report, that from this
dark deep, next to nothing, should be raised such a multitude of comely
creatures, with such innumerable varieties of members, voices, colours,
motions, and such numbers of shining stars ; a bright sun, one uniform
body of light from this darkness, that should, like a giant, rejoice to run a
race for many thousand years together, without stop or weariness ; would
not all these have seemed as incredible as the collection of scattered dust ?
What was it that erected the ionumerable host of heaven, the glorious angels,
and glittering stars, for aught we know more numerous than the bodies of
men, but an act of the divine will ? And shall the power that wrought this,
sink under the charge of gathering some dispersed atoms, and compacting
them into a human body ? Can you tell how the dust of the ground was
kneaded by God into the body of man, and changed into flesh, skin, hair,
bones, sinews, veins, arteries, and blood, and fitted for so many several
activities, when a human soul was breathed into it ? * Can you imagine how
a rib, taken from Adam's side, a lifeless bone, was formed into head,
hands, feet, eyes ? Why may not the matter of men which have been
be restored, as well as that which was not be first erected? Is it harder to
repair those things which were, than to create those things which were not ?
Is there not the same artificer ? Hath any disease or sickness abated his
power ? Is the Ancient of days grown feeble ? or shall the elements and
other creatures, that alway yet obeyed his command, ruffle against his raising
voice, and refuse to disgorge those remains of human bodies they have
swallowed up in their several bowels ? Did the whole world, and all the
parts of it, rise at his word ? and shall not some parts of the world, the dust
of the dead, stand up out of the graves at the word of the same mighty
efficacy ? Do we not annually see those marks of power which may stun
our incredulity in this concern ? Do you see, in a small acorn or little seed,
any such sights as a tree, with body, bark, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit ?
Where can you find them ? Do you know the invisible corners where they
lurk in that little body ? And yet these you afterwards view rising up from
this little body, when sown in the ground, that you could not possibly have
any prospect of when you rolled it in your hand, or opened its bowels. And
why may not all the particulars of our bodies, however disposed as to their
distinct natures invisibly to us, remain distinct, as well as if you mingle a
thousand seeds together, they will come up in their distinct kinds, and pre-
serve their distinct virtues ?

Again, is not the making heaven and earth, the union of the divine and
human nature, eternity and infirmity, to make a virgin conceive a son, bear
the Creator, and bring forth the Redeemer, to form the blood of God of the
flesh of a virgin, a greater work than the calling together and uniting the
scattered parts of our bodies, which are all of one nature and matter ? And
since the power of God is manifested in pardoning innumerable sins, is not
the scattering our transgressions, as far as the east is from the west, as the
expression is, Ps. ciii. 12, and casting such numbers into the depths of the
* Lingend, to . iii. p. 779, 780.

174 chabnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

sea, whicli is God's power over himself, a greater argument of might than
the recalling and repairing the atoms of our bodies from their various recep-
tacles ? It is not hard for them to believe this of the resurrection, that have
been sensible of the weight and force of their sins, and the power of God in
pardoning and vanquishing that mighty resistance, which was made in their
hearts against the power of his renewing and sanctifying grace. The con-
sideration of the infinite power of God is a good ground of the belief of the
resurrection.

' 8. Since the power of God is so great and incomprehensible, how strange
is it that it should be contemned and abused by the creatures as it is ! The
power of God is beaten down by some, outraged by others, blasphemed by
many under their sufferings. The stripping God of the honour of his
creation, and the glory of his preservation of the world, falls under this
charge. Thus do they that deny his framing the world alone, or thought
the first matter was not of God's creation ; and such as fancied an evil
principle, the author of all evil, as God is the author of all good, and so
exempt from the power of God that it could not be vanquished by him.
These things have formerly found defenders in the world, but they are in
themselves ridiculous and vain, and have no footing in common reason, and
are not worthy of debate in a Christian auditory.

In general, all idolatry in the world did arise from the want of a due
notion of this infinite power. The heathen thought one God was not suffi-
cient for the managing of all things in the world, and therefore they feigned
several gods that had several charges : as Ceres presided over the fruits of
the earth ; Esculapius over the cure of distempers ; Mercury for merchan-
dise and trade ; Mars for war and battles ; Apollo and Minerva for learning
and ingenious arts ; and Fortune for casual things. Whence doth the other
sort of idolatry, the adoring our bags and gold, our dependencies on and
trusting in creatures for help, arise, but from ignorance of God's power, or
mean and slender apprehensions of it?

First, There is a contempt of it.

Secondly, An abuse of it.

(1.) It is contemned in every sin, especially in obstinacy in sin. All sin
whatsoever is built upon some false notion or monstrous conception of one
or other of God's perfections, and in particular of this. It includes a secret
and lurking imagination, that we are able to grapple with omnipotence, and
enter the lists with almightiness ; what else can be judged of the apostle's
expression, 1 Cor. x. 22, ' Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy ? are we
stronger than he ? ' Do we think we have an arm too powerful for that
justice we provoke, and can repel that vengeance we exasperate ? Do we
think we are an even match for God, and are able to despoil him of his
divinity ? To despise his will, violate his order, practise what he forbids
with a severe threatening, and pawns his power to make it good, is to pre-
tend to have an arm like God, and be able to thunder with a voice equal or
superior to him, as the expression is. Job xl. 9. All security in sin is of
this strain ; when men are not concerned at divine threatenings, nor
staggered in their sinful race, they intimate that the declarations of divine
power are but vain-glorious boastings, that God is not so strong and able as
he reports himself to be ; and therefore they will venture it, and dare him
to try whether the strength of his arm be as forcible as the words of his
mouth are terrible in his threats. This is to believe themselves creators, not
creatures. We magnify God's power in our wants, and debase it in our
rebellions, as though omnipotence were only able to supply our necessities,
and unable to revenge the injuries we offer him.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's powee. 175

' (2.) This power is contemned in distrust of God. All distrust is founded
in a doubting of his truth, as if he would not be as good as his word ; or
of his omniscience, as if he had not a memory to retain his word ; or.! of his
power, as if he could not be as great as his word. We measure the infinite
power of God by the short line of our understandings, as if infinite strength
were bounded within the narrow compass of our finite reason, as if he could
do no more than we were able to do.

How soon did those Israelites lose the remembrance of God's out-
stretched arm, when they uttered that atheistical speech, Ps. Ixxviii. 19,
' Can God furnish a table in the wilderness ?' As if he that turned the dust
of Egypt into lice for the punishment of their oppressors, could not turn the
dust of the wilderness into corn for the support of their bodies ! As if he
that had miraculously rebuked the Red Sea for their safety, could not pro-
vide bread for their nourishment ! Though they had seen the Egyptians
with lost lives in the morning, in the same place where their lives had been
miraculously preserved in the evening, yet they disgrace that experimented
power by opposing to it the stature of the Anakims, the strength of their
cities, and the height of their walls. Numb. xiii. 82. And Numb. xiv. 3,
* Wherefore hath the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the sword ?'
as though the giants of Canaan were too strong for him, for whom they had
seen the armies of Egypt too weak. How did they contract the almightiness
of God into the littleness of a little man, as if he must needs sink under the
sword of a Canaanite !

This distrust must arise either from a flat atheism, a denial of the being
of God or his government of the world, or unworthy conceits of a weakness
in him, that he had made creatures too hard for himself, that he were not
strong enough to grapple with those mighty Anakims, and give them the
possession of Canaan against so great a force. Distrust of him implies,
either that he was alway destitute of power, or that his power is exhausted
by his former works, or that it is limited and near a period ; it is to deny
him to be the Creator that moulded heaven and earth. Why should we by
distrust put a slight upon that power which he hath so often expressed, and
which in the minutest works of his hands surmounts the force of the sharpest
understanding ?

(3.) It is contemned in too great a fear of man, which ariseth from a
distrust of divine power. Fear of man is a crediting the might of man with
a disrepute of the arm of God ; it takes away the glory of his might, and
renders the creature stronger than God, and God more feeble than mortal,
as if the arm of man were a rod of iron, and the arm of God a brittle reed.
How often do men tremble at the threatenings and hectorings of ruffians,
yet will stand as stakes against the precepts and threatenings of God ; as
though he had less power to preserve us, than enemies had to destroy !
With what disdain doth God speak to men infected with this humour !
Isa. li. 12, 13, ' Who art thou, that art afraid of a man that shall die, and
of the son of man, that shall be made as grass, and forgettest the Lord thy
maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundation of the
earth, and hast feared continually every day, because of the fury of the
oppressor ?'

To fear man that is as grass, that cannot think a thought without a divine
concourse, that cannot breathe but by a divine power, nor touch a hair
without license first granted from heaven ; this is a forgetfulness, and con-
sequently a slight, of that infinite power which hath been manifested in
founding the earth and garnishing the heavens. All fear of man in the way
of our duty, doth in some sort thrust out the remembrance and discredit

176 charnock's works. [Job XXYI. 14.

the great actions of the Creator, Would not a mighty prince think it a
disparagement to him if his servant should decline his command for fear of one
of his subjects ? And hath not the great God just cause to think himself
disgraced by us, when we deny him obedience for fear of a creature, as
though he had but an infant ability, too feeble to bear us out in duty, and
incapable to balance the strength of an arm of flesh !

(4.) It is'contemned by trusting in ourselves, in means, in man, more than
in God. When in any distress we will try every creature-refuge before we
have recourse to God, and when we apply ourselves to him, we do it with
such slight and perfunctory frames, and with so much despondency, as if we
despaired either of his ability or will to help us, and implore him with cooler
affections than we solicit creatures ; or, when in a disease we depend upon
the virtue of the medicine, the ability of the physician, and reflect not upon
that power that endued the medicine with that virtue, and supports the
quality in it, and concurs to the operation of it ; when we depend upon the
activity of the means, as if they had power originally in themselves, and not
derivatively, and do not eye the power of God animating and assisting them.
We cannot expect relief from anything with a neglect of God, but we render it
in our thoughts more powerful than God ; we acknowledge a greater fulness
in a shallow stream, than in an eternal spring ; we do in effect depose the
true God, and create to ourselves a new one ; we assert by such a kind of act-
ing the creature, if not superior, yet equal with God and independent on
him. When we trust in our own strength without begging his assistance, or
boast of our own strength without acknowledging his concurrence, as the
Assyrian, — ' By the strength of my hand have I done this, I have put down
the inhabitants like a valiant man,' Isa. x. 13, — it is as if ' the axe should
boast itself against him that hews therewith,' and thinks itself more mighty
than the arm that wields it, verse 15, when we trust in others more than in
God. Thus God upbraids those by the prophet that sought help from
Egypt, telling them, Isa. xxxi. 3, ' The Egyptians were men, and not gods,'
intimating that, by their dependence on them, they rendered them gods and
not men, and advanced them from the state of creatures to that of almighty
deities. It is to set a pile of dust, a heap of ashes, above him that created
and preserves the world. To trust in a creature, is to make it as infinite
as God, to do that which is impossible in itself to be done. God him-
self cannot make a creature infinite, for that were to make him God.

It is also contemned when we ascribe what we receive to the power
of instruments, and not to the power of God. Men, in whatsoever they do
for us, are but the tools whereby the Creator works. Is it not a disgrace
to the limner to admire his pencil and not himself; to the artificer to admire
his file and engines, and not his power 1 It is ' not I,' saith Paul, that
labour, ' but the grace,' the efiicacious grace, * of God which is in me.' What-
soever good we do is from him, not from ourselves ; to ascribe it to our-
selves, or to instruments, is to overlook and contemn his power.

(5.) Unbelief of the gospel is a contempt and disowning divine power.
This perfection hath been discovered in the conception of Christ, the union
of the two natures, his resurrection from the grave, the restoration of the
world, and the conversion of men, more than in the creation of the world ;
then what a disgrace is unbelief to all that power, that so severely punished
the Jews for the rejecting the gospel, turned so many nations from their
beloved superstitions, humbled the power of princes and the wisdom of
philosophers, chased devils from their temples by the weakness of fishermen,
planted the standard of the gospel against the common notions and inveterate
customs of the world ! What a disgrace is unbelief to this power, which

Job XXVI. 14.] god's poweb. 177

hath preserved Christianity from being extinguished by the force of men and
devils, and kept it flourishing in the midst of sword, fire, and executioners ;
that hath made the simplicity of the gospel overpower the eloquence of
orators, and multiplied it from the ashes of martyrs, when it was destitute
of all human assistances ! Not heartily to believe and embrace that doctrine
which hath been attended with such marks of power, is a high reflection
upon this divine perfection, so highly manifested in the first publication, pro-
pagation, and preservation of it.

The power of God is abused as well as contemned ;

(1.) When we make use of it to justify contradictions. The doctrine of
transubstantiation is an abuse of this power. When the maintainers of it
cannot answer the absurdities alleged against it, they have recourse to the
power of God. It implies a contradiction, that the same body should be on
earth and in heaven at the same instant of time ; that it should be at the
right hand of God, and in the mouth and stomach of a man ; that it should
be a body of flesh, and yet bread to the eye and to the taste ; that it should
be visible and invisible, a glorious body, and yet gnawn by the teeth of a
creature ; that it should be multiplied in a thousand places, and yet an entire
body in every one, where there is no member to be seen, no flesh to be
tasted ; that it should be above us in the highest heavens, and yet within
us in our lower bowels. Such contradictions as these are an abuse of the
power of God.

Again, we abuse this power, when we believe every idle story that is reported,
because God is able to make it so if he pleased. We may as well believe
iEsop's fables to be true, that birds spake and beasts reasoned, because the
power of God can enable such creatures to such acts. God's power is not
the rule of our belief of a thing, without the exercise of it in matter of fact, and
the declaration of it upon sufficient evidence.

(2.) The power of God is abused, by presuming on it, without using the
means he hath appointed. When men sit with folded arms, and make a
confidence in his power a glorious title to their idleness and disobedience,
they would have his strength do all, and his precept should move them to
do nothing ; this is a trust of his power against his command, a pretended
glorifying his power with a slight of his sovereignty. Though God be
almighty, yet for the most part he exerciseth his might in giving life and
success to second causes and lawful endeavours. When we stay in the
mouth of danger, without any call ordering us to continue, and against a
door of providence opened for our rescue, and sanctuary ourselves in the
power of God without any promise, without any providence conducting us,
this is not to glorify the divine might, but to neglect it, in neglecting the
means which his power afi"ords to us for our escape ; to condemn it to our
humours, to work miracles for us according to our wills, and against his
own.* God could have sent a worm to be Herod's executioner, when he
sought the life of our Saviour, or employed an angel from heaven to have
tied his hands or stopped his breath, and not put Joseph upon a flight to Egypt
with our Saviour ; yet had it not been an abuse of the power of God, for
Joseph to have neglected the precept, and slighted the means God gave him
for the preserving his own life and that of the child's ! Christ himself, when
the Jews consulted to destroy him, presumed not upon the power of God to
secure him, but used ordinary means for his preservation, by walking no
more openly, but retiring himself into a city near the wilderness till the hour
was come, and the call of his Father manifest, John xi. 53, 54. A rash*
running upon danger, though for the truth itself, is a presuming upon, and
* Harwood, p 13.

VOL. II. M

178 chaenock's woeks. [Job XXVI. 14.

consequently an abuse of, this power ; a proud challenging it to serve our
turns against the authority of his will, and the force of his precept ; a not
resting in his ordinate power, but demanding his absolute power to pleasure
our follies and presumption, concluding and expecting more from it than
what is authorised by his will.

9. Instruction. If infinite power be a peculiar property of God, how
miserable will all wicked rebels be under this power of God ! Men may
break his laws, but not impair his arm ; they may slight his word, but can-
not resist his power. If he swear that he will sweep a place with the besom
of destruction, * As he hath thought, so shall it come to pass ; and as he hath
purposed, so shall it stand,' Isa. xiv. 23, 24. Rebels against an earthly
prince may exceed him in strength, and be more powerful than their sove-
reign. None can equal God, much less exceed him. As none can exercise
an act of hostility against him without his permissive will, so none can
struggle from under his hand without his positive will. He hath an arm
not to be moved, a hand not to be wrung aside. God is represented on his
throne like a jasper stone. Rev. iv. 3, as one of invincible power when he
comes to judge. The jasper is a stone which withstands the greatest force.*
Though men resist the order of his laws, they cannot resist the sentence of
their punishment, nor the execution of it. None can any more exempt
themselves from the arm of his strength, than they can from the authority
of his dominion. As they must bow to his sovereignty ; so they must sink
under his force. A prisoner in this world may make his escape ; but a
prisoner in the world to come cannot : Job. x. 7, ' There is none that can
deliver out of thine hand.' There is ' none to deliver when he tears in pieces,'
Ps. 1. 22. His strength is uncontrollable ; hence his throne is represented
as a fiery flame, Dan. vii. 9. As a spark of fire hath power to kindle one
thing after another, and increase till it consumes a forest, a city, swallow
up all combustible matter, till it consumes a world, and many worlds, if they
were in being. What power hath a tree to resist the fire, though it seems
mighty when it out-braves the winds ? What man to this day hath been
able to free himself from that chain of death God clapped upon him for his
revolt ? And if he be too feeble to rescue himself from a temporal, much
less from an eternal death- The devils have to this minute groaned under
the pile of wrath, without any success in delivering themselves by all their
strength, which much surmounts all the strength of mankind, nor have they
any hopes to work their rescue to eternity.

How foolish is every sinner ! Can we poor worms strut it out against
infinite power ? We cannot resist the meanest creatures when God com-
missions them, and puts a sword into their hands. They will not, no, not
the worms, be startled at the glory of a king, when they have their Creator's
warrant to be his executioners. Acts xii. 23. Who can withstand him, when
he commands the waves and inundations of the sea to leap over the shore ;
when he divides the ground in earthquakes, and makes it gape wide to
swallow the inhabitants of it ; when the air is corrupted to breed pestilences ;
when storms and showers, unseasonably falling, putrefy the fruits of the
earth ? What created power can mend the matter, and with a prevailing voice
say to him, What dost thou ?

There are two attributes God will make glister in hell to the full, his
wrath and his power : Rom. ix. 22, * What if God, willing to shew his wrath,
and to make his power known, endured with much long-sufliering the vessels
of wrath fitted for destruction ?' If it were mere wrath, and no power to
second it, it were not so terrible ; but it is wrath and power, both are joined
* Grot, in loc.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's powee. 179

together ; it is not only a sharp sword, but a powerful arm ; and not only
that, for then it were well for the damned creature. To have many sharp
blows, and from a strong arm, this may be without putting forth the highest
strength a man hath ; but in this God makes it his design to make his power
known and conspicuous. He takes the sword (as it were) in both hands,
that he may shew the strength of his arm in striking the harder blow ; and
therefore the apostle calls it, 2 Thes. i. 9, ' the glory of his power,' which
puts a sting into this wrath ; and it is called. Rev. xix. 15, ' the fierceness
of the wrath of the Almighty,' God will do it in such a manner, as to make
men sensible of his almightiness in every stroke. How great must that
vengance be, that is backed by all the strength of God ? When there will
be a powerful wrath without a powerful compassion, when all this power
shall be exercised in punishing, and not the least mite of it exercised in
pitying, how irresistible will be the load of such a weighty hand ! How
can the dust of the balance break the mighty bars, or get out of the lists of
a powerful vengeance, or hope for any grain of comfort ! Oh that every
obstinate sinner would think of this, and consider his unmeasurable boldness
in thinking himself able to grapple with omnipotence ! What force can any
have to resist the presence of him before whom rocks melt, and the heavens
at length shall be shrivelled up as a parchment by the last fire ! As the
light of God's face is too dazzling to be beheld by us, so the arm of his
power is too mighty to be opposed by us. His almightiness is above the
reach of our potsherd strength, as his infiniteness is above the capacity of
our purbhnd understandings. God were not omnipotent, if his power could
be rendered inefiectual by any.

Use 2. A second use of this point, from the consideration of the infinite
power of God, is of comfort. As omnipotence is an ocean that cannot be
fathomed, so the comforts from it are streams that cannot be exhausted.
What joy can be wanting to him that finds himself folded in the arms of
omnipotence !

This perfection is made over to believers in the covenant, as well as any
other attribute : ' I am the Lord your God ;' therefore^that power, which is
as essential to the Godhead as any other perfection of his nature, is in the
rights and extent of it assured unto you. Nay, we may not say, it is made
over more than any other, because it is that which animates every other
perfection, and is the spirit that gives them motion and appearance in the
world. If God had expressed himself in particular, as, I am a true God, a
wise God, a loving God, a righteous God, I am yours, what would all or
any of those have signified, unless the other also had been implied, as, I am
almighty God, I am your God ! In God's making over himself in any par-
ticular attribute, this of his power is included in every one, without which
all his other grants would be insignificant. It is a comfort that power is
in the hand of God ; it can never be better placed, for he can never use his
power to injure his confiding creature. If it were in our own hands, we might
use it to injure ourselves. It is a power in the hand of an indulgent father,
not a hard-hearted tyrant ; it is a just power. ' His right hand is full of
righteousness,' Ps. xlviii. 10 ; because of his righteousness he can never use
it ill, and because of his wisdom he can never use it unseasonably. Men
that have strength often misplace the actings of it, because of their folly,
and sometimes employ it to base ends, because of their wickedness. But
this power in God is alway awakened by goodness and conducted by
wisdom ; it is never exercised by self-will and passion, but according to the
immutable rule of his own nature, which is righteousness. How comfortable
is it to think that you have a God that can do what he pleases ; nothing so

1.80 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

difficult but he can effect, nothing so strong but he can over-rule ! You
need not dread men, since you have one to restrain them ; nor fear devils,
since you have one to chain them. No creature but is acted by this power ;
no creature but must fall upon the withdrawing of this power. It was not
all laid out in creation ; it is not weakened by his preservation of things ;
he yet hath a fulness of power, and a residue of Spirit. For whom should
that eternal arm of the Lord be displayed, and that incomprehensible thun-
der of his power be shot out, but for those for whose sake and for whose
comfort it is revealed in his word ?
In particular,

1. Here is comfort in all afflictions and distresses. Our evils can never
be so great to oppress us as his power is great to deliver us. The same
power that brought a world out of chaos, and constituted and hath hitherto
preserved the regular motion of the stars, can bring order out of our confu-
sions, and light out of our darkness. When our Saviour was in the greatest
distress, and beheld the face of his Father frowning, while he was upon the
cross, in his complaint to him he exerciseth faith upon his power : Mat.
xxvii. 46, 'Eli, Eli; My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' that
is, ' My strong, my strong.' El is a name of power belonging to God ; he
comforts himself in his power, while he complains of his frowns. Follow
his pattern, and forget not that power that can scatter the clouds, as well as
gather them together. The psalmist's support in his distress was in the
creative power of God : Ps. cxxi. 2, ' My help comes from the Lord which
made heaven and earth.'

2. It is comfort in all strong and stirring corruptions and mighty tempta-
tions. It is by this we may arm ourselves, and be ' strong in the power of
his might,' Eph. vi. 10. By this we may conquer principalities and powers
as dreadful as hell, but not so mighty as heaven ; by this we may triumph
over lusts within, too strong for an arm of flesh ; by this the devils that
have possessed us may be cast out, the battered walls of our souls may be
repaired, and the sons of Anak laid flat. That power that brought light
out of darkness, and over-mastered the deformity of the chaos, and set
bounds to the ocean, and dried up the Red Sea by a rebuke, can quell the
tumults in our spirits, and level spiritual Gohahs by his word. When the
disciples heard that terrifying speech of our Saviour concerning rich men,
that it was ' easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God,' Mat. xix. 24, to entertain
the gospel, which commanded self-denial ; and that, because of the allure-
ments of the world, and the strong habits in their soul, Christ refers them
to the power of God, ver. 26, who could expel those ill habits and plant
good ones : ' With men this is impossible, but with God all things are pos-
sible.' There is no resistance but he can surmount, no stronghold but he
can demolish, no tower but he can level.

8. It is comfort from hence that all promises shall be performed. Good-
ness is sufficient to make a promise, but power is necessary to perform a
promise. Men that are honest cannot often make good their words, because
something may intervene that may shorten their ability, but nothing can
disable God without diminishing his Godhead. He hath an infiuiteness of
power to accomplish his word, as well as an infiuiteness of goodness to make
and utter his word. That might whereby he ' made heaven and earth,' and
his ' keeping truth for ever,' are joined together, Ps. cxlvi. 5, 6 ; his Father's
faithfulness and his creative power are linked together. It is upon this basis
the covenant, and every part of it, is established, and stands as firm as the
almightiness of God, whereby he sprung up the earth and reared the

Job XXYI. 14.] god's power. 181

heavens : ' No power can resist his will,' Rom. ix. 19 ; * Who can disannul
his purpose, and turn back his hand when it is stretched out ? ' Isa. xiv. 27.
His word is unalterable, and his power is invincible. He could not deceive
himself, for he knew his own strength when he promised ; no unexpected
event can change his resolution, because nothing can happen without the
compass of his foresight. No created strength can stop him in his action,
because all creatures are ready to serve him at his command ; not the devils
in hell, nor all the wicked men on earth, since he hath strength to restrain
them, and an arm to punish them. What can be too hard for him that
created heaven and earth ? Hence it was that when God promised anything
anciently to his people, he used often the name of the * Almighty,' the
' Lord that created heaven and earth,' as that which was an undeniable
answer to any objection against anything that might be made against the
greatness and stupendousness of any promise. By that name in all his works
of grace was he known to them, Exod. vi. 3. When we are sure of his
will, we need not question his strength, since he never over-engageth himself
above his ability. He that could not be resisted by nothing in creation, nor
vanquished by devils in redemption, can never want power to glorify his faith-
fulness in his accomplishment of whatsoever he hath promised.

4. From this infiniteness of power in God, we have ground of assurance
for perseverance. Since conversion is resembled to the works of creation
and resurrection, two great marks of his strength, he doth not surely employ
himself in the first work of changing the heart, to let any created strength
baffle that power which he began and intends to glorify. It was this might
that struck ofi" the chain, and expelled that strong one that possessed you.
What if you are too weak to keep him out of his lost possession, will God
lose the glory of his first strength, by suffering his foiled adversary to make
a re-entry, and regain his former usurpation ? His outstretched arm will
not do less by his spiritual than it did by his national Israel ; it guarded
them all the way to Canaan, and left them not to shift for themselves after
he had struck off the fetters of Egypt, and buried their enemies in the Eed
Sea, Deut. i. 31. This greatness of the Father above all our Saviour makes
the ground of believers' continuance for ever against the blasts of hell and
engines of the world : John x. 29, ' My Father is greater than all, and none
is able to pluck them out of my Father's hands.' Our keeping is not in our
own weak hands, but in the hands of him who is mighty to save. That
power of God keeps us which intends our salvation. In all fears of falling
away, shelter yourselves in the power of God : ' He shall be holden up,'
saith the apostle, speaking concerning one weak in faith. And no other
reason is rendered by him but this, ' for God is able to make him to stand,'
Rom. xiv. 4.

From this attribute of the infinite power of God, we have a ground of
comfort in the lowest estate of the church. Let the state of the church be
never so deplorable, the condition never so desperate, that power that created
the world, and shall raise the bodies of men, can create a happy state for the
church, and raise her from an overwhelming grave. Though the enemies
trample upon her, they cannot upon the arm that holds her, which by the
least motion of it can lift her up above the heads of her adversaries, and
make them feel the thunder of that power that none can understand. ' By
the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils they are con-
sumed,' Job iv. 9 ; they shall be ' scattered as chaff before the wind.' _ If
once he ' draw his hand out of his bosom,' all must fly before him, or sink
under him, Ps. Ixxiv. 11 ; and when there is none to help, his own arm sus-
tains him, and brings salvation, and his fury doth uphold him, Isa. Ixiii. 5.

182 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

What if the church totter under the underminings of hell ! What if it hath a
sad heart and wet eyes ! In what a little moment can he make the night
turn into day, and make the Jews that were preparing for death in Shushan
triumph over the necks of their enemies, and march in one hour with swords
in their hands, that expected the last hour ropes about their necks ! Esth.
ix. 1, 5. If Israel be pursued by Pharaoh, the sea shall open its arms to
protect them ; if they be thirsty, a rock shall spout out water to refresh
them ; if they be hungry, heaven shall be their granary for manna ; if Jeru-
salem be besieged, and hath not force enough to encounter Sennacherib, an
angel shall turn the camp into an Aceldama, a field of blood. His people
shall not want deliverances, till God want a power of working miracles for
their security. He is more jealous of his power than the church can be of
her safety ; and if we should want other arguments to press him, we may
implore him by virtue of his power ; for when there is nothing in the church
as a motive to him to save it, there is enough in his own name, and the illus-
tration of his power, Ps. cvi. 8. Who can grapple with the omnipotency of
that God who is jealous of, and zealous for, the honour of it ? And there-
fore God, for the most part, takes such opportunities to deliver, wherein his
almightiness may be most conspicuous, and his counsels most admirable.
He awakened not himself to deliver Israel till they were upon the brink of
the Ked Sea ; nor to rescue the three children till they were in the fiery furnace ;
nor Daniel till he was in the lion's den. It is in the weakness of his crea-
ture that his strength is perfected ; not in a way of addition of perfectness
to it, but in a way of manifestation of the perfection of it ; as it is the per-
fection of the sun to shine and enlighten the world, not that the sun receives
an increase of light by the darting of his beams, but discovers his glory to
the admiration of men, and pleasure to the world. If it were not for such
occasions, the world would not regard the mightiness of God, nor know what
power were in him. It traverses the stage in its fulness and liveliness upon
such occasions, when the enemies are strong, and their strength edged with
an intense hatred, and but little time between the contrivance and execution.
It is the great comfort that the lowest distresses of the church are a fit scene
for the discovery of this attribute, and that the glory of God's omnipotence,
and the church's security, are so straitly linked together. It is a promise
that will never be forgotten by God, and ought never to be forgotten by us,
that ' in this mountain, the hand of the Lord shall rest,' Isa. xxv. 10 ; that
is, the power of the Lord shall abide ; * and Moab shall be trodden under
him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill.' And the plagues of
Babylon * shall come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine ; for strong
is the Lord who judges her,' Kev. xviii. 8.

Use 3. The third use is for exhortation.

1. Meditate on this power of God, and press it often upon your minds.
We conclude many things of God that we do not practically suck the comfort
of, for want of deep thoughts of it, and frequent inspection into it. We
believe God to be true, j^et distrust him ; we acknowledge him powerful, yet
fear the motion of every straw. Many truths, though assented to in our
understandings, are kept under hatches by corrupt afiections, and have not
their due influence, because they are not brought forth into the open air of
our souls by meditation. If we will but search our hearts, we shall find it
is the power of God we often doubt of. When the heart of Ahaz and his
subjects trembled at the combination of the Syrian and Israelitish kings
against him, for want of a confidence in the power of God, God sends his
prophet with commission to work a miraculous sign at his own choice, to
rear up his fainting heart ; and when be refused to ask a sign out of diflfi-

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 183

dence of that almighty power, the prophet complains of it as an afifront to
his master, Isa. vii. 12, 13. Moses, so great a friend of God, was overtaken
with this kind of unbelief, after all the experiments of God's miraculous
acts in Egypt ; the answer God gives him manifests this to be at the core :
' Is the Lord's hand waxed short ?' Num. xi. 23.

For want of actuated thoughts of this, we are many times turned from our
known duty by the blast of a creature ; as though man had more power to
dismay us than God hath to support us in his commanded way. The belief
of God's power is one of the first steps to all religion ; without settled thoughts
of it, we cannot pray lively and believingly, for the obtaining the mercies we
want, or the averting the evils we fear ; we should not love him, unless we
are persuaded he hath a power to bless us ; nor fear him, unless we are per-
suaded of his power to punish us. The frequent thoughts of this would
render our faith more stable, and our hopes more stedfast ; it would make
us more feeble to sin, and more careful to obey. When the virgin staggered
at the message of the angel, that she should bear a Son, he in his answer
turns her to the creative power of God : Luke i. 85, ' The power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee ;' which seems to be an allusion to the Spirit's
moving upon the face of the deep, and bringing a comely world out of a con-
fused mass. Is it harder for God to make a virgin conceive a Son by the
power of his Spirit, than to make a world ? Why doth he reveal himself so
often under the title of Almighty, and press it upon us, but that we should
press it upon ourselves ? And shall we be forgetful of that, which everything
about us, everything within us, is a mark of? How come we by the power
of seeing and hearing, a faculty and act of understanding and will, but by
this power framing us, this power assisting us ? What though the thunder
of his power cannot be understood ; no more can any other perfection of his
nature ; shall we therefore seldom think of it ? The sea cannot be fathomed,
yet the merchant excuseth not himself from sailing upon the surface of it.
We cannot glorify God without due consideration of this attribute ; for his
power is his glory as much as any other, and called both by the name of
' glory,' Rom. vi. 4, speaking of Christ's resurrection by the glory of the
Father ; and also ' the riches of his glory,' Eph. iii. 16. Those that have
strong temptations in their course, and over-pressiog corruptions in their
hearts, have need to think of it out of interest, since nothing but this can
relieve them. Those that have experimented the working of it in their new
creation, are obliged to think of it out of gratitude. It was this mighty
power over himself that gave rise to all that pardoning grace already con-
ferred, or hereafter expected ; without it, our souls had been consumed, the
world overturned : we could not have expected a happy heaven, but have lain
yelling in an eternal hell, had not the power of his mercy exceeded that of
his justice, and his infinite power executed what his infinite wisdom had con-
trived for our redemption. How much also should we be raised in our admi-
rations of God, and ravish ourselves in contemplating that might that can
raise innumerable worlds in those infinite imaginary spaces without this
globe of heaven and earth, and exceed inconceivably what be hath done in
the creation of this !

2. From the pressing the consideration of this upon ourselves, let us be
induced to trust God upon the account of his power. The main end of the
revelation of his power to the patriarchs, and of the miraculous operations of
it in Egypt, was to induce them to an entire reposing themselves in God ;
and the psalmist doth scarce speak of the divine omnipotence without making
this inference from it ; and scarce exhorts to a trust in God, but backs it
with a consideration of his power in creation, it being the chief support of

184 chajinock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

the soul : Ps. cxlvi. 5, 6, * Happy is he whose hope is in the Lord his God,
which made heaven and earth, the sea and all that therein is.' That power
is invincible that drew the world out of nothing : nothing can happen to us
harder than the making the world without the concurrence of instruments.
No difficulty can nonplus that strength, that hath drawn all things out of
nothing, or out of a confused matter next to nothing. No power can rifle
what we commit to him, 2 Tim. i. 12. He is all power, ahove the reach of
all power ; all other powers in the world flowing from him, or depending on
him. He is worthy to be trusted, since we know him true, without ever
breaking his word, and omnipotent, never failing of his purpose ; and a con-
fidence in it is the chief act whereby we can glorify this power and credit his
arm. A strong God, and a weak faith in omnipotence, do not suit well
together ; indeed, we are more engaged to a trust in divine power than the
ancient patriarchs were. They had the verbal declaration of his power, and
many of them little other evidence of it than in the creation of the world ; and
their faith in God being established in this first discovery of his omnipotence,
drew out itself further to believe, that whatsoever God promised by his word,
he was able to perform, as well as the creation of the world out of nothing,
which seems to be the intendment of the apostle, Heb. xi. 3 ; not barely to
speak of the creation of the world by God, which was a thing the Hebrews
understood well enough from their ancient oracles, but to shew the founda-
tion of the patriarchs' faith, viz., God making the world by his word, and
what use they made of the discovery of his power in that, to lead them to
believe the promise of God concerning the seed of the woman to be brought
into the world ; but we have not only the same foundation, but superadded
demonstrations of this attribute in the conception of our Saviour, the union
of the two natures, the glorious redemption, the propagation of the gospel,
and the new creation of the world. They relied upon the naked power of
God, without those more illustrious appearances of it, which have been in
the ages since, and arrived to their notice. We have the wonderful effects
of that which they had but obscure expectations of.

(1.) Consider, trust in God can never be without taking in God's power
as a concurrent foundation with his truth. It is the main ground of trust,
and so set forth in the prophet : Isa. xxvi. 4, ' Trust ye in the Lord for
ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.' And the faith of the
ancients so recommended, Heb. xi., had this chiefly for its ground, and the
faith in gospel times is called a ' trusting on his arm,' Isa. li. 5. All the
attributes of God are the objects of our veneration, but they do not equally
contribute to the producing trust in our hearts ; his eternity, simplicity,
infiniteness, ravish and astonish our minds when we consider them.* But
there is no immediate tendency in their nature to allure us to a confidence in
him, no, not in an innocent state, much less in a lapsed and revolted con-
dition. But the other perfections of his nature, as his holiness, righteous-
ness, mercy, are amiable to us in regard of the immediate operations of
them upon and about the creature, and so having something in their own
nature to allure us to repose ourselves in him ; but yet those cannot engage
to an entire trust in him, without reflecting upon his ability, which can only
render those useful and successful to the creature. For whatsoever bars
stand in the way of his holy, righteous, and merciful proceedings towards
his creatures are not overmastered by those perfections, but by that strength
of his which can only relieve us in concurrence with the other attributes.
How could his mercy succour us without his arm, or his wisdom guide us
without his hand, or his truth perform promises to us without his strength !
♦ Amyraut, Moral, torn. v. p, 170.

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 185

As no attribute can act without it, so in our addresses to him upon the
account of any particular perfection in the Godhead according to our indi-
gency, one eye must be perpetually fixed upon this of his power, and our
faith would be feeble and dispirited without eying this ; without this, his
holiness,|which hates sin, would not be regarded, and his mercy, pitying a
grieving sinner, would not be valued. As this power is the ground of a
wicked man's fear, so it is the ground of a good man's trust. This was
that which was the principal support of Abraham, not barely his promise,
but his ability to make it good, Rom. iv. 21 ; and when he was commanded to
sacrifice Isaac, the ability of God to raise him up again, Heb. xi. 19. All
faith would droop, and be in the mire, without leaning upon this. All those
attributes which we consider as moral in God would have no influence upon
us without this, which we consider physical in God. Though we value the
kindness men may express to us in our distresses, yet we make them not
the objects of our confidence, unless they have an ability to_ act what they
express. There can be no trust in God without an eye to his power.

(2.) Sometimes the power of God is the sole object of trust. As when
we have no promise to assure us of his will, we have nothing else to pitch
upon but his ability ; and that not his absolute power, but his ordinate, in
the way of his providence. We must not trust in it so as to expect he
should please our humour with fresh miracles, but rest upon his power, and
leave the manner to his will. Asa, when ready to conflict with the vast
Ethiopian army, pleaded nothing else but this power of God, 2 Chron.
xiv. 11. And the three children, who had no particular promise of deliver-
ance (that we read of), stuck to God's ability to preserve them against the
king's threatening, and owned it in the face of the king, yet with some kind
of inward intimations in their own spirits that he would also deliver them :
Dan. iii. 17, ' Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burn-
ing fiery furnace.' And accordingly the fire burned the cords that tied them,
without singeing anything else about them. But when this power had been
exercised upon hke occasions, it is a precedent he hath given us to rest
upon. Precedents in law are good pleas, and strong encouragements to the
client to expect success in his suit. ' Our fathers trusted in thee, and thou
didst deliver them,' saith David, Ps. xxii. 4. And Jehoshaphat in a case
of distress, 2 Chron. xx. 7, ' Art not thou our God, that didst drive out the
inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel ?' When we have not any
statute law and promise to plead, we may plead his power, together with
the former precedents and acts of it. The centurion had nothing else to
act his faith upon, but the power of Christ, and some evidences of it in the
miracles reported of him ; but he is silent in the latter, and casts himself
only upon the former, acknowledging that Christ had the same command
over diseases as himself had over his soldiers. Mat. viii. 10. And our
Saviour, when he receives the petition of the blind men, requires no more of
them in order to a cure, but a belief of his ability to perform it : Mat. ix. 28,
'Believe you that I am able to do this ?' His will is not known but by
revelation, but his power is apprehended by reason, as essentially and
eternally linked with the notion of a God. God also is jealous of the
honour of this attribute, and since it is so much virtually discretlited, he is
pleased when any do cordially own it, and entirely resign themselves to the
assistance of it.

Well then, in all duties where faith is particularly to be acted, forget not
this as the main prop of it. Do you pray for a flourishing and triumphing
grace ? Consider him as * able to make all grace to abound in you,' 2 Cor.
ix. 8. Do you want comfort and reviving under your contritions and godly

186 charnock's works. [Job XXVI. 14.

sorrow ? Consider him as he declares himself, ' the high and lofty one,'
Isa. Ivii. 15. Are you under pressing distresses ? Take Eliphaz his
advice to Job, when he tells him what he himself would do if he were in
his case: Job v. 8, * I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit
my cause.' But observe under what consideration ; ver. 9, as to one that
' doth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without number.'
When you beg of him the melting of your rocky hearts, the dashing in
pieces your strong corruptions, the drawing his beautiful image in your
soul, the quickening your dead hearts, and reviving your drooping spirits,
and supplying your spiritual wants, consider him as one ' able to do
abundantly,' not only ' above what you can ask,' but ' above what you can
think,' Eph. iii. 20. Faith will be spiritless, and prayer will be lifeless, if
power be not eyed by us in those things which cannot be done with an arm
of omnipotence.

(3.) This doctrine teaches us humility and submission. The vast dis-
proportion between the mightiness of God, and the meanness of a creature,
inculcates the lesson of humiUty in his presence. How becoming is humility

* under a mighty hand' ! 1 Peter v. 6. What is an infant in a giant's hand,
or a lamb in a lion's paw ? Submission to irresistible power is the best
policy, and the best security; this gratifies and draws out goodness, whereas
murmuring and resistance exasperates and sharpens power. We sanctify
his name, and glorify his strength by falling down before it ; it is an acknow-
ledgment of his invisible strength, and our inability to match it. How low
should we therefore lie before him, against whose power our pride and mur-
muring can do no good, who can outwrestle us in our contests, and alway

* overcome when he judges ' ! Rom iii. 4.

(4.) This doctrine teacheth us not to fear the pride and force of man.
How unreasonable is it to fear a limited above an unbounded power ! How
unbecoming is the fear of man in him, who hath an interest in a strength
able to curb the strongest devils ! Who would tremble at the threats of a
dwarf, that hath a mighty and watchful giant for his guard ? If God doth
but arise, ' his enemies are scattered,' Ps. Ixviii. 1, the least motion makes
them fly before him ; it is no difficult thing for him, that made them by a
word, to unmake their designs, and shiver them in pieces by the breath of
his mouth. ' He brings princes to nothing, and makes the judges of the
earth vanity;' they wither when he blows upon them, and ' their stock shall
not take root in the earth.' He can command a ' whirlwind to take them
away as stubble,' Isa. xl. 23, 24 ; yea, with the shaking of his hand
he makes servants to become rulers of those that were their masters,
Zech. ii. 9. Whole nations are no more in his hands than a morning cloud,
or the dew upon the ground, or the chaff before the wind, or the smoke
against the motion of the air, which though it appear out of a chimney like
a black invincible cloud, is quickly dispersed, and becomes invisible, Hosea
xiii. 3. How inconsiderable are the most mighty to this strength, which
can puff away a whole world of proud grasshoppers, and a whole sky of daring
clouds ! He that by his word masters the rage of the sea, can overrule the
pride and power of men. Where is the fury of the oppressor ? It cannot
overleap the bounds he hath set it, nor march an inch beyond the point he
hath prescribed it. Fear not the confederacies of man, but * sanctify the
Lord of hosts, let him be your fear, and let him be your dread,' Isa. viii. 13.
To fear men is to dishonour the name of God, and regard him as a feeble
Lord, and not as the Lord of hosts, who is mighty in strength, so that they
that harden themselves against him shall not prosper.

(5.) Therefore this doctrine teacheth us the fear of God. The prophet

Job XXVI. 14.] god's power. 187

Jeremiah counts it as an impossible thing for men to be destitute of the fear
of God, when they seriously consider his name to be great and mighty.
Jer. X. 6, 7, ' Thou art great, and thy name is great in might. Who would
not fear thee, 0 thou King of nations ?' Shall we not tremble at his pre-
sence, who hath ' placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual
decree,' that though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet they ' cannot
prevail,' Jer. v. 22. He can arm the weakest creature for our destruction,
and disarm the strongest creatures which appear for our preservation. He
can command a hair, a crumb, a kernel to go awry, and strangle us ; he
can make the heavens brass over our head, stop close the bottles of the
clouds, and make the fruit of the fields droop, when there is a small distance
to the harvest; he can arm men's wit, wealth, hands against themselves ; he
can turn our sweet morsels into bitter, and our own consciences into devour-
ing lions ; he can root up cities by moles, and conquer the proudest by lice
and worms. The omnipotence of God is not only the object of a believer's
trust, but a believer's fear. It is from the consideration of this power only
that our Saviour presses his disciples, whom he entitles his friends, to fear
God ; which lesson he presses by a double repetition, and with a kind of
asseveration, without rendering any other reason than this of the ability of
God to cast into hell, Luke xii. 5. We are to fear him because he can, but
bless his goodness because he will not. In regard of his omnipotence, he
is to be reverenced, not only by mortal men, but by the blessed angels, who
are past the fear of any danger by his power, being confirmed in a happy
state by his unalterable grace. When they adore him for his holiness, they
reverence him for his power with covered faces. The title of the Lord of
hosts is joined in their reverential praise with that of his holiness : Isa.
vi. 3, ' Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.' How should we adore that
power which can preserve us, when devils and men conspire to destroy us !
How should we stand in awe of that power which can destroy us, though
angels and men should combine to preserve us ! The parts of his ways
which are discovered are suflicient motives to an humble and reverential
adoration. But who can fear and adore him according to the vastness of
his power, and his excellent greatness, since * the thunder of his power who
can understand ! '

A DISCOURSE UPON THE HOLINESS OF GOD.

Who is like vnto thee, 0 Lord, among the gods ? who is like thee, glorious in
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders. — Exod. XV. 11.

This verse is one of the loftiest descriptions of the majesty and excellency
of God in the whole Scripture.* It is a part of Moses's 'Ect/k/x/ov, or
triumphant song, after a great, and real, and a typical victory, in the womb
of which all the deliverances of the church were couched. It is the first
song upon holy record, and it consists of gratulatory and prophetic matter.
It casts a look backward to what God did for them in their deliverance from
Egypt ; and a look forward, to what God shall do for the church in future
ages. That deliverance was but a rough draught of something more excel-
lent to be wrought towards the closing up of the world ; when his plagues
shall be poured out upon the antichristian powers, which should revive the
same song of Moses in the church, as fitted so many ages before for such a
scene of affairs. Rev. xv. 2, 3. It is observed therefore, that many words
in this song are put in the future tense, noting a time to come ; and the
very first word, ver. 1, ' Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this
song ;' "l^t^'' shall sing ; implying, that it was composed and calculated for
the celebrating some greater action of God's, which was to be wrought in
the world. Upon this account some of the Jewish rabbins, from the con-
sideration of this remark, asserted the doctrine of the resurrection to be
meant in this place ;f that Moses and those Israelites should rise again to
sing the same song, for some greater miracles God should work, and greater
triumphs he should bring forth, exceeding those wonders at their deliverance
from Egypt.

It consists of,J 1. A preface ; ver. 1, * I will sing unto the Lord.'
2. An historical narration of matter of fact ; ver. 8, 4, ' Pharaoh's
chariots and his host hath he cast into the Red sea,' which he solely
ascribes to God ; ver. 6, ' Thy right hand, 0 Lord, is become glorious in
power : thy right hand, 0 Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy ;' which
he doth prophetically, as respecting something to be done in after times ;
or farther, for the completing of that deliverance ; or as others think,
respecting their entering into Canaan, for the words in these two verses are
put in the future tense. The manner of the deliverance is described, ver. 8,
' The floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the

* Trap, in loc. t Mauass. ben. Israel, de Eesur. lib. i. cap. i. p. 7.

{ Pareus in Exod. xv.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 189

heart of the sea.' In the 9th verse he magnifies the victory from the vain-
glory and security of the enemy : ' The enemy said, I will pursue, I will
overtake, I will divide the spoil,' &c. And ver. 16, 17, he prophetically
describes the fruit of this victory in the influence it shall have upon those
nations by whose confines they were to travel to the promised land : ' Fear
and dread shall fall upon them : by the greatness of thy arm they shall be
as still as a stone ; till thy people pass over, which thou hast purchased.'
The phrase of this and the 17th and 18th verses, seems to be more ma»-
nificent than to design only the bringing the Israelites to the earthly Canaan ;
but seems to respect the gathering his redeemed ones together, to place
them in the spiritual sanctuary which he had established, wherein the Lord
should reign for ever and ever, without any enemies to disturb his royalty ;
' The Lord shall reign for ever and ever,' ver. 18. The prophet, in the
midst of his historical narrative, seems to be in an ecstasy, and breaks out
in a stately exaltation of God in the text.

' Who is like unto thee, 0 Lord, among the gods ? ' &c. Inten-ogations
are in Scripture the strongest afiirmations or negations. It is here a strong
affirmation of the incomparableness of God, and a strong denial of the
worthiness of all creatures to be partners with him in the degrees of his
excellency. It is a preference of God before all creatures in holiness, to
which the purity of creatures is but a shadow ; in desert of reverence and
veneration, he being * fearful in praises.' The angels cover their faces when
they adore him in his particular perfections.

' Amongst the gods.' Among the idols of the nations, say some ; others
say,* it is not to be found that the heathen idols are ever dignified with the
title of strong or mighty, as the word translated gods doth import, and
therefore understand it of the angels, or other potentates of the world ; or
rather inclusively, of all that are noted for and can lay claim to the title of
strength and might upon the earth or in heaven. God is so great and
majestic, that no creature can share with him in his praise.

' Fearful in praises.' Various are the interpretations of this passage. To
be reverenced in praises ; his praise ought to be celebrated with a religious
fear. Fear is the product of his mercy as well as his justice : ' He hath
forgiveness that he may be feared,' Ps. cxxx. 4. Or, fearful in praises ;
whom none can praise without amazement at the considerations of his works.
None can truly praise him without being aff'ected with astonishment at his
greatness.! Or, fearful in praises ; % whom no mortal can sufficiently praise,
since he is above all praise. Whatsoever a human tongue can speak, or an
angelical understanding think of the excellency of his nature and the great-
ness of his works, falls short of the vastness of the divine perfection. A
creature's praises of God are as much below the transcendent eminency of
God, as the meanness of a creature's being is below the eternal fulness of
the Creator. Or rather, fearful, or terrible in praises ; that is, in the matter
of thy praise ; and the learned Rivet concurs with me hi this sense. The
works of God celebrated in this song were terrible. It was the miraculous
overthrow of the strength and flower of a mighty nation. His judgments
were severe, as well as his mercy was seasonable. The word ^*^^J signifies
glorious and illustrious, as well as terrible and fearful. No man can hear
the praise of thy name, for those great judicial acts, without some astonish-
ment at thy justice, the stream, and thy holiness the spring of those mighty
works. This seems to be the sense of the following words, ' doing wonders.'
Fearful in the matter of thy praise, they being wonders which thou hast
done among us and for us.

♦ Rivet. t Calvin. X Munster.

190 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

' Doing wonders.' Congealing the waters by a wind, to make them stand
like walls for the rescue of the Israelites, and melting them by a wind, for
the overthrow of the Egyptians, are prodigies that challenge the greatest
adorations of that mercy which delivered the one, and that justice which
punished the other ; and of the arm of that power whereby he effected both
his gracious and his righteous purposes.

Doct. Whence observe, that the judgments of God upon his enemies, as
well as his mercies to his people, are matter of praise. The perfections of
God appear in both. Justice and mercy are so linked together in his acts
of providence, that the one cannot be forgotten whiles the other is acknow-
ledged. He is never so terrible as in the ' assemblies of his saints,' and the
deliverance of them, Ps. Ixxxix. 7. As the creation was erected by him for
his glory, so all the acts of his government are designed for the same end.
And his creatures deny him his due, if they acknowledge not his excellency,
in whatsoever dreadful as well as pleasing garbs it appears in the world.
His terror as well as his righteousness appears when he is a ' God of salva-
tion,' Ps. Ixv. 5. • By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us,
0 God of our salvation.'

But the expression I pitch upon in the text to handle is, glorious in holi-
ness. He is magnified or honourable in holiness ; so the word Tli<^ is
translated, Isa. xlii. 21, * He will magnify the law and make it honourable.'
Thy holiness hath shone forth admirably in this last exploit against the
enemies and oppressors of thy people. The holiness of God is his glory,
as his grace is his riches ; holiness is his crown, and his mercy is his
treasure. This is the blessedness and nobleness of his nature ; it renders
him glorious in himself, and glorious to his creatures, that understand any-
thing of this lovely perfection.

Doct. Holiness is a glorious perfection belonging to the nature of God,
hence he is in Scripture styled often the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob,
the Holy One of Israel, and oftener entitled] Holy than Almighty, and set
forth by this part of his dignity more than by any other. This is more
affixed as an epithet to his name than any other ; you never find it expressed,
his migliti/ name or his uise name, but his great name, and most of all his holg
name. This is his greatest title of honour ; in this doth the majesty and
venerableness of his name appear. When the sinfulness of Sennacherib is
aggravated, the Holy Ghost takes the rise from this attribute, 2 Kings xix.
22, ' Thou has lift up thine eyes on high, even against the Holy One of
Israel ;' not against the wise, mighty, &c., but against the Holy One of Israel,
as that wherein the majesty of God was most illustrious. It is upon this
account he is called light, as impurity is called darkness ; both in this sense
are opposed to one another ; he is a pure and unmixed light, free from all
blemish in his essence, nature, and operations.

1. Heathens have owned it. Proclus calls him the undefiled governor,
"A-)(^^avTog riyiiJ^uiv, of the world. The poetical transformations of their
false gods, and the extravagancies committed by them, was (in the account of
the wisest of them) an unholy thing to report and hear.* And somef vindi-
cate Epicurus from the atheism wherewith he was commonly charged, that
he did not deny the being of God, but those adulterous and contentious deities
the people worshipped, which were practices unworthy and unbecoming the
nature of God ; hence they asserted that virtue was an imitation of God,
and a virtuous man bore a resemblance to God. If virtue were a copy from
God, a greater holiness must be owned in the original ; and when some of them

* 'Ovh a%o-jziv o(Sm. Ammon in Plut. de 'E/ apud Delphos, p, 393'
t Gassend. torn. i. Phys. sec. i. lib. iv. cap. ii. p. 289.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 191

were at a loss how to free God from being the author of sin in the world, they
ascribe the birth of sin to matter, and run into an absurd opinion, fancying
it to be uncreated, that thereby they might exempt God from all mixture of
evil, so sacred with them was the conception of God as a holy God.

2. The absurdest heretics have owned it.* The Manichees and Marcion-
ites, that thought evil came by necessity, yet would salve God's being the
author of it, by asserting two distinct eternal principles, one the original of
evil, as God was the fountain of good ; so rooted was the notion of this
divine purity, that none would ever slander goodness itself with that which
was so disparaging to it.

3. The nature of God cannot rationally be conceived without it. Though
the power of God be the first rational conclusion drawn from the sight of
his works, wisdom the next from the order and connection of his works,
purity must result from the beauty of his works. That God cannot be
deformed by evil, who hath made everything so beautiful in its time. The
notion of a God cannot be entertained without separating from him what-
soever is impure and bespotting, both in his essence and actions. Though
we conceive him infinite in majesty, infinite in essence, eternal in duration,
mighty in power, and wise and immutable in his counsels, merciful in his
proceedings with men, and whatsoever other perfections may dignify so
sovereign a being ; yet if we conceive him destitute of this excellent per-
fection, and imagine him possessed with the least contagion of evil, we make
him but an infinite monster, and sully all those perfections we ascribed to
him before ; we rather own him a devil than a god. It is a contradiction to
be God and to be darkness, or to have one mote of darkness mixed with
his light. It is a less injury to him to deny his being, than to deny the
purity of it ; the one makes him no God, the other a deformed, unlovel}',
and a detestable God.

Plutarch said not amiss, that he should count himself less injured by that
man, that should deny that there was such a man as Plutarch, than by him
that should affirm that there was such a one indeed, but he was a debauched
fellow, a loose and vicious person. It is a less wrong to discard any
acknowledgments of his being, and to count him nothing, than to believe
him to exist, but imagine a base and unholy deity ; he that saith, God is
not holy, speaks much worse than he that saith, There is no God at all.

Let these two things be considered :

1. If any, this attribute hath an excellency above his other perfections.
There are some attributes of God we prefer, because of our interest in them, and
the relation they bear to us ; as we^esteem his goodness before his power,
and his mercy, whereby he relieves us, before his justice, whereby he
punisheth us. As there are some we more delight in because of the good-
ness we receive by them, so there are some that God delights to honour
because of their excellency.

(1.) None is sounded out so loftily, with such solemnity, and so frequently
by angels that stand before his throne, as this. Where do you find any other
attribute trebled in the praises of it, as this ? Isa. vi. 3, * Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord of hosts ; the whole earth is full of his glory ;' and Rev. iv.
8, ' The four beasts rest not day and night saying. Holy, holy, holy. Lord
God Almighty,' &c. His power of sovereignty as Lord of hosts, is but
once mentioned, but with a ternal repetition of his holiness. Do you hear
in any angelical song any other perfection of the divine nature thrice re-
peated ? Where do we read of the crying out Eternal, eternal, eternal ;
or Faithful, faithful, faithful. Lord God of hosts ! Whatsoever other attri-
* Petav. Theol. Dogmat torn. i. lib. vit cap. v. p. 415.

192 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

bute is left out, this God would have to fill the mouths of angels and blessed
spirits for ever in heaven.

(2.) He singles it out to swear by : Ps. Ixxxix. 35, * Once have I sworn
by my holiness, that I will not lie unto David ;' and Amos iv. 2, ' The Lord
will swear by his holiness.' He twice swears by his holiness, once by his
power, Isa. Ixii. 8 ; once by all, when he swears by his name, Jer. xliv,^26.
He lays here his holiness to pledge for the assurance of his promise, as the
attribute most dear to him, most valued by him, as though no other could
give an assurance parallel to it, in this concern of an everlasting redemption,
which is there spoken of. He that swears, swears by a greater than himself.
God having no greater than himself, swears by himself; and swearing here
by his holiness seems to equal that single to all his other attributes, as if he
were more concerned in the honour of it than of all the rest. It is as if
he should have said, Since I have not a more excellent perfection to swear
by than that of my holiness, I lay this to pawn for your security, and bind
myself by that which I will never part with, were it possible for me to be
stripped of all the rest. It is a tacit imprecation of himself, If I lie
unto David, let me never be counted holy, or thought righteous enough
to be trusted by angels or men. This attribute he makes most of.

(3.) It is his gloiy and beauty. Holiness is the honour of the creature, —
sanctification and honour are linked together, 1 Thes. iv. 4, — much more is it
the honour of God ; it is the image of God in the creature, Eph. iv. 24.
When we take the picture of a man, we draw the most beautiful part, the
face, which is a member of the greatest excellency ; when God would be drawn
to the life, as much as can be, in the spirit of his creatures, he is drawn in
this attribute, as being the most beautiful perfection of God, and most valu-
able with him. Power is his hand and arm, omniscience his eye, mercy
his bowels, eternity his duration, his holiness is his beauty : 2 Chron.
XX. 21, * should praise the beauty of his holiness.' In Ps. xxvii. 4, David
desires to ' behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his holy temple ;'
that is, the holiness of God manifested in his hatred of sin in the daily
sacrifices. Holiness was the beauty of the temple; Isa. xlvi. 11, 'Holy
and beautiful house' are joined together, much more the beauty of God that
dwelt in the sanctuary.

This renders him lovely to all his innocent creatures, though formidable
to the guilty ones. A heathen philosopher could call it the beauty of the
divine essence, and say, that God was not so happy by an eternity of life,
as by an excellency of virtue.* And the angels' song intimate it to be his glory,
Isa. vi. 3, ' The whole earth is full of thy glory ;' that is, of his holiness in
his laws and in his judgments against sin, that being the attribute applauded
by them before.

(4.) It is his very life ; so it is called, Eph. iv. 18, * Alienated from the
life of God ;' that is, from the holiness of God, speaking of the opposite to
it, the uncleanness and profaneness of the Gentiles. We are only alienated
from that which we are bound to imitate ; but this is the perfection alway
set out as the pattern of our actions, ' Be you holy, as I am holy;' no other
is proposed as our copy ; alienated from that purity of God, which is as
much as his life, without which he could not live. If he were stripped of
this, he would be a dead God, more than by the want of any other perfection.
His swearing by it intimates as much ; he swears often by his own life :
• As I live, saith the Lord ;' so he swears by his holiness as if it were his life,
and more his life than any other. Let me not live, or let me not be holy,
are all one in his oath. His deity could not outlive the life of his purity.
* Plutarch, Eugubin de Perenni. Phil. lib. vi. cap, vi.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 193

2. As it seems to challenge an excellency above all his other perfections,
so it is the glory of all the rest ; as it is the glory of the Godhead, so it is
the glory of every perfection in the Godhead ; as his power is the strength
of them, so his holiness is the beauty of them ; as all would be weak with-
out almightiness to back them, so all would be uncomely without holiness to
adorn them. Should this be sullied, all the rest would lose their honour and
their comfortable efficacy ; as at the same instant that the sun should lose
its light, it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening
virtue. As sincerity is the lustre of every grace in a Christian, so is purity
the splendour of every attribute in the Godhead. His justice is a holy
justice, his wisdom a holy wisdom, his arm of power a ' holy arm,' Ps.
xcviii. 1, his truth or promise a 'holy promise,' Ps. cv. 42. Hohj and true
go hand in hand, Eev. vi. 10. 'His name,' which signifies all his attri-
butes in conjunction, ' is holy,' Ps. ciii. 1. Yea, he is 'righteous in all his
ways, and holy in all his works,' Ps. cxlv. 17. It is the rule of all his acts,
the source of all his punishments. If every attribute of the Deity were a
distinct member, purity would be the form, the soul, the spirit to animate
them. Without it, his patience would be an indulgence to sin, his mercy a
fondness, his wrath a madness, his power a tyranny, his wisdom an un-
worthy subtilty. It is this gives a decorum to all. His mercy is not exer-
cised without it, since he pardons none but those that have an interest by
union in the obedience of a mediator, which was so delightful to his infinite
purity. His justice, which guilty man is apt to tax with cruelty and violence
in the exercise of it, is not acted out of the compass of this rule. In acts
of man's vindictive justice, there is something of impurity, perturbation,
passion, some mixture of cruelty; but none of these fall upon God in the
severest acts of wrath. When God appears to Ezekiel in the resemblance
of fire, to signify his anger against the house of Judah for their idolatry,
' from his loins downwards there was the appearance of fire ; but from the
loins upward the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber,' Ezek.
viii. 2. His heart is clear in his most terrible acts of vengeance; it is a
pure flame wherewith he scorcheth and burns his enemies. He is holy in
the most fiery appearance.

This attribute, therefore, is never so much applauded as when his sword
hath been drawn, and he hath manifested the greatest fierceness against his
enemies. The magnificent and triumphant expression of it in the text fol-
lows just upon God's miraculous defeat and ruin of the Egyptian army :
* The sea covered them ; they sank as lead in the mighty waters.' Then it
follows, ' Who is like unto thee, 0 Lord, glorious in holiness ? ' And when
it was so celebrated by the seraphims, Isa. vi. 3, it was when 'the posts
moved, and the house was filled with smoke,' ver. 4, which are signs of
anger, Ps. xviii. 7, 8. And when he was about to send Isaiah upon a mes-
sage of spiritual and temporal judgments, that he would ' make the heart of
that people fat, and their ears heavy, and their eyes shut, waste their cities
without inhabitant, and their houses without man, and make the land deso-
late,' ver. 9-12 ; and the angels, which here applaud him for his holiness,
are the executioners of his justice, and here called seraphims, from burning
or fiery spirits, as being the ministers of his wrath. His justice is part of
his holiness, whereby he doth reduce into order those things that are out of
order. When he is consuming men by his fury, he doth not diminish, but
manifest purity : Zeph. iii. 5, ' The just Lord is in the midst of her, he will
do no iniquity.' Every action of his is free from all tincture of evil. It is
also celebrated with praise by the four beasts about the throne, when he
appears in a covenant garb, with a rainbow about his throne, and yet with

VOL, II. N

194 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

thunderings and lightnings shot out against his enemies, Rev. iv. 8 com-
pared with ver. 3, 5, to shew that all his acts of mercy, as well as justice,,
are clear from any stain.

This is the crown of all his attributes, the life of all his decrees, the
brightness of all his actions. Nothing is decreed by him, nothing is acted
by him, but what is worthy of the dignity, and becoming the honour, of thi^
attribute.

For the better understanding this attribute, observe,

I. The nature of this holiness.

II. The demonstration of it.

III. The purity of his nature in all his acts about sin.

IV. The use of all to ourselves.

I. First, The nature of divine holiness.

In general.

The holiness of God negatively is a perfect and polluted freedom from all
evil. As we call gold pure that is not imbased by any dross, and that gar-
ment clean that is free from any spot, so the nature of God is estranged
from all shadow of evil, all imaginable contagion.

Positively, it is the rectitude or integrity of the divine nature, or that
conformity of it in affection and action to the divine will as to his eternal
law, whereby he works with a becomingness to his own excellency, and
whereby he hath a delight and complacency in everything agreeable to his
will, and an abhorrency of everything contrary thereunto.

As there is no darkness in his understanding, so there is no spot in his
will. As his mind is possessed with all truth, so there is no deviation in
his will from it. He loves all truth and goodness, he hates all falsity and
evil. In regard of his righteousness, he loves righteousness : Ps. xi. 7,

* The righteous Lord loveth righteousness ; ' and ' hath no pleasure in wicked-
ness,' Ps. v. 4. He values purity in his creatures, and detests all impurity,
whether inward or outward. We may indeed distinguish the holiness of
God from his righteousness in our conceptions.* Holiness is a perfection
absolutely considered in the nature of God; righteousness, a perfection as
referred to others, in his actions towards them and upon them.

In particular.

This property of the divine nature is,

1. First, An essential and necessary perfection. He is essentially and
necessarily holy. It is the essential glory of his nature. His holiness is as
necessary as his being, as necessary as his omniscience. As he cannot but
know what is right, so he cannot but do what is just. His understanding
is not as created understandings, capable of ignorance as well as knowledge ;
80 his will is not as created wills, capable of unrighteousness as well as
righteousness. There can be no contradiction or contrariety in the divine
nature, to know what is right and to do what is wrong. If so, there would
be a diminution of his blessedness ; he would not be a God alway blessed,

* blessed for ever,' as he is, Rom. ix. 5. He is as necessarily holy as he is
necessarily God ; as necessarily without sin as without change. As he was
God from eternity, so he was holy from eternity. He was gracious, merci-
ful, just in his own nature, and also holy, though no creature had been
framed by him to exercise his grace, mercy, justice, or holiness upon.f If
God had not created a world, he had in his own nature been almighty and
able to create a world. If there never had been anything but himself, yet
he had been omniscient, knowing everything that was within the verge and

* Martin, de Deo, p. 86. t Turretin, de Satisfact., p. 28.

ExoD. XY. 11.] god's holiness. 195

compass of his infinite power ; so lie was pure in his own nature, though he
never had brought forth any rational creature whereby to manifest this
purity. These perfections are so necessary, that the nature of God could
not subsist without them. And the acts of those ad intra, or within himself,
are necessary ; for being omniscient in nature, there must be an act of know-
ledge of himself and his own nature. Being infinitely holy, an act of holi-
ness in infinitely loving himself must necessarily flow from this perfection.*
As the divine will cannot but be perfect, so it cannot be wanting to render
the highest love to itself, to its goodness, to the divine nature, which is due
to him. Indeed, the acts of those ad extra are not necessary but upon a
condition. To love righteousness without himself, or to detest sin, or inflict
punishment for the committing of it, could not have been had there been no
righteous creature for him to love, no sinning creature for him to loathe and
to exercise his justice upon as the object of punishment.

Some attributes require a condition to make the acts of them necessary.
As it is at God's liberty whether he will create a rational creature or no ;
but when he decrees to make either angel or man, it is necessary, from the
perfection of his nature, to make them righteous. It is at God's liberty
whether he will speak to man or no; but if he doth, it is impossible for him
to speak that which is false, because of his infinite perfection of veracity.
It is at his liberty whether he will permit a creature to sin ; but if he sees
good to sufier it, it is impossible but that he should detest that creature that
goes cross to his righteous nature. His holiness is not solely an act of his
will, for then he might be unholy as well as holy, he might love iniquity and
hate righteousness, he might then command that which is good, and after-
wards command that which is bad and unworthy ; for what is only an act of
his will, and not belonging to his nature, is indifi"erent to him. As the
positive law he gave to Adam of not eating the forbidden fruit was a pure
act of his will'; he might have given him liberty to eat of it, if he had
pleased, as well as prohibited him. But what is moral and good in its own
nature is necessarily willed by God, and cannot be changed by him, because
of the transcendent eminency of his nature and righteousness of his will ; as
it is impossible for God to command his creature to hate him, or to dispense
with a creature for not loving him ; for this would be to command a thing
intrinsecally evil, the highest ingratitude, the very spirit of all wickedness,
which consists in the hating God. Yet though God be thus necessarily
holy, he is not so by a bare and simple necessity, as the sun shines, or the
fire burns ; but by a free necessity, not compelled thereunto, but inclined from
the fulness of the perfection of his own nature and will, so as by no means
he can be unholy, because he will not be unholy ; it is against his nature
to be so.

2. God is only absolutely holy : ' There is none holy as the Lord,' 1 Sam.
ii. 2. It is the peculiar glory of his nature. As there is none good but
God, so none holy but God. No creature can be essentially holy, because
mutable ; holiness is the substance of God, but a quality and accident in a
creature. God is infinitely holy, creatures finitely holy. He is holy from
himself, creatures are holy by derivation from him. He is not only holy,
but holiness ; holiness, in the highest degree, is his sole prerogative. As
the highest heaven is called the heaven of heavens, because it embraceth in
its circle all the heavens, and contains the magnitude of them, and hath a
greater vastness above all that it encloseth, so is God the holy of holies, he
contains the holiness of all creatures put together, and infinitely more. As
all the wisdom, excellency, and power of the creatures, if compared with
* Ochino, Predic, part iii. Bodic. 51, p. 847, 848.

196 chaenock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

the wisdom, excellency, and power of God, is but folly, vileness, and weak-
ness, so the highest created purity, if set in parallel with God, is but
impurity and uncleanness : Rev. xv. 4, ' Thou only art holy.' It is like the
light of a glow-worm to that of the sun, Job xv. 15 ; * The heavens are not
pure in his sight, and his angels he charged with folly,' Job iv. 18. Though
God hath crowned the angels with an unspotted sanctity, and placed them
in a habitation of glory, yet as illustrious as they are, they have an un-
worthiness in their own nature to appear before the throne of so holy a
God. Their holiness grows dim and pale in his presence ; it is but a weak
shadow of that divine purity, whose light is so glorious that it makes them
cover their faces out of weakn-ess to behold it, and cover their feet out of
shame in themselves. They are not pure in his sight, because though they
love God (which is a principle of holiness) as much as they can, yet not so
much as he deserves. They love him with the intensest degree according to
their power, but not with the intensest degree according to his own amiable-
ness ; for they cannot infinitely love God unless they were as infinite as
God, and had an understanding of his perfections equal wuth himself, and
as immense as his own knowledge. God having an intimate knowledge of
himself, can only have an infinite love to himself, and consequently an
infinite holiness without any defect ; because he loves himself according to
the vastness of his own amiableness, which no finite being can. Therefore
though the angels be exempt from corruption and soil, they cannot enter
into comparison with the purity of God, without acknowledgment of a dim-
ness in themselvess. ^ Besides, he charges them with folly, and puts no
trust in them ; because they have the power of sinning, though not the act
of sinning, they have a possible folly in their own nature to be charged with.
Holiness is a quality separable from them, but it is inseparable fi-om God.
Had they not at tirst a mutability in their nature, none of them could have
sinned, there had been no devils ; but because some of them sinned, the
rest might have sinned. And though the standing angels shall never be
changed, yet they are still changeable in their own nature, and their stand-
ing is due to grace, not to nature. And though they shall be for ever pre-
served, yet they are not, nor ever can be, immutable by nature, for then
they should stand upon the same bottom with God himself ; but they are
supported by gi-ace against that changeableness of nature which is essential
to a creature. The Creator ' only hath immortality,' that is, immutability,
1 Tim. iii. 16.

It is as certain a truth that no creature can be naturally immutable and
impeccable, as that God cannot create anything actually polluted and imper-
fect. It is as possible that the highest creature may sin, as it is possible
that it may be annihilated ; it may become not holy, as it may become not
a creature, but nothing. The holiness of a creature may be reduced into
nothing as well as his substance, but the holiness of the Creator cannot be
diminished, dimmed, or overshadowed : James i. 17, ' He is the Father of
lights, with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning.' It is as im-
possible his holiness should be blotted, as that his Deity should be extin-
guished ; for whatsoever creature hath essentially such or such qualities,
cannot be stripped of them without being turned out of its essence. As a
man is essentially rational, and if he ceaseth to be rational, he ceaseth to be
man ; the sun is essentially luminous ; if it should become dark in its own
body, it would cease to be the sun. In regard of this absolute and only
holiness of God, it is thrice repeated by the seraphims, Isa. vi. 3. The
threefold repetition of a word notes the certainty or absoluteness of the
thing, or the irreversibleness of the resolve ; as Ezek. xxi. 27, ' I will over-

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 197

turn, overturn, overturn,' notes the certainty of the judgment ; also Rev.
viii. 8, ' Woe, woe, woe,' three times repeated, signifies the same. The
holiness of God is so absolutely peculiar to him, that it can no more be ex-
pressed in creatures than his omnipotence, whereby they may be able to
create a world; or his omniscience, whereby they may be capable of know-
ing all things, and knowing God as he knows himself.

3. God is so holy, that he cannot possibly approve of any evil done by
another, but doth perfectly abhor it ; it would not else be a glorious holi-
ness : Ps. V. 3, ' He hath no pleasure in wickedness.' He doth not only
love that which is just, but abhor with a perfect hatred all things contrary
to the rule of righteousness. Holiness can no more approve of sin than it
can commit it. To be delighted with the evil in another's act, contracts a
guilt as well as the commission of it, for approbation of a thing is a consent
to it. Sometime the approbation of an evil in another is a more grievous
crime than the act itself, as appears in Rom. i. 32, who ' knowing the judg-
ment of God, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do it,'
where the not only manifests it to be a greater guilt to take pleasure in
them. Every sin is aggravated by the delight in it ; to take pleasure in
the evil of another's action shews a more ardent affection and love to sin
than the committer himself may have. This therefore can as little fall
upon God as to do an evil act himself; yet as a man may be delighted with
the consequences of another's sin, as it may occasion some public good, or
private good to the guilty person, as sometimes it may be an occasion of
his repentance, when the horridness of a fact stares him in the face, and
occasions a self-reflection for that and other crimes, which is attended with
an indignation against them, and sincere remorse for them, so God is pleased
with those good things his goodness and wisdom bring forth upon the occa-
sion of sin. But in regard of his holiness, he cannot approve of the evil,
whence his infinite wisdom drew forth his own glory and his creatures'
good. His pleasure is not in the sinful act of the creature, but in the act of
his own goodness and skill, turning it to another end than what the creature
aimed at.

(1.) He abhors it necessarily. Holiness is the glory of the Deity, there-
fore necessarily. The nature of God is so holy that he cannot but hate it :
Hab. i. 13, ' Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look
on iniquity.' He is more opposite to it than light to darkness, and there-
fore it can expect no countenance from him. A love of holiness cannot be
without a hatred of everything that is contrary to it. As God necessarily
loves himself, so he must necessarily hate everything that is against him-
self; and as he loves himself for his own excellency and holiness, he must
necessarily detest whatsoever is repugnant to his holiness, because of the
evil of it. Since he is infinitely good, he cannot but love goodness, as it is
a resemblance to himself; and cannot but abhor unrighteousness, as being
most distant from him, and contrary to him. If he have any esteem for his
own perfections, he must needs have an implacable aversion to all that is so
repugnant to him, that would, if it were possible, destroy him, and is a point
directed not only against his glory, but against his life. If he did not hate
it, he would hate himself; for since righteousness is his image, and sin would
deface his image, if he did not love his image, and loathe what is against his
image, he would loathe himself, he would be an enemy to his own nature.
Nay, if it were possible for him to love it, it were possible for him not to be
holy, it were possible then for him to deny himself, and will that he were no
God, which is a palpable contradiction.* Yet this necessity in God of hating
* Turretin. de Satisfact. p. 35, 36.

198 cuajrnock's wokks. [Exod. XV. 11.

sin is not a brutish necessity, such as is in mere animals, that avoid by a
natural instinct, not of choice, what is prejudicial to them; but most free as
well as necessary, arising from an infinite knowledge of his own nature, and
of the evil nature of sin, and the contrariety of it to his own excellency, and
the order of his works.

(2.) Therefore intensely. Nothing do men act for more than their glory.
As he doth infinitely, and therefore perfectly, know himself, so he infinitely,
and therefore perfectly, knows what is contrary to himself ; and as according
to the manner and measure of his knowledge of himself, is his love to him-
self, as infinite as his knowledge, and therefore uuespressible and uncon-
ceivable by us, so from the perfection of his knowledge of the evil of sin,
which is infinitely above what any creature can have, doth arise a displeasure
against it suitable to that knowledge. In creatures, the degrees of affection
to, or aversion from, a thing, are suited to the strength of their apprehen-
sions of the good or evil in them. God knows not only the workers of
wickedness, but the wickedness of their works. Job xi. 11, for ' he knows
vain men, he sees wickedness also.' The vehemency of this hatred is ex-
pressed variously in Scripture ; he loathes it so, that he is impatient of be-
holding it ; the very sight of it afiects him with detestation, Hab. i. 13 ; he
hates the first spark of it in the imagination, Zeeh. viii. 17. With what variety
of expressions doth he repeat his indignation at their polluted services :
Amos V. 21, 22, ' I hate,' ' I detest,' ' I despise,' ' I will not smell,' ' I will
not accept,' ' I will not regard ;' ' take away from me the noise of thy songs,
I will not hear.' So Isa. i. 14, ' My soul hates, they are a trouble to me,
I am weary to bear them.' It is the ' abominable thing that he hates,' Jer.
xliv. 4 ; he is vexed and fretted at it, Isa. Ixiii. 10. Ezek. xvi. 43, he abhors
it so, that his hatred redounds upon the person that commits it ; Ps. v. 5,
he ' hates all workers of iniquity.' Sin is the only primary object of his
displeasure. He is not displeased with the nature of man as man, for that
was derived from him ; but with the nature of man as sinful, which is from
the sinner himself. When a man hath but one object for the exercise of all
his anger, it is stronger than when diverted to many objects. A mighty
torrent, when diverted into many streams, is weaker than when it comes in
a full body upon one place only. The infinite anger and hatred of God,
which is as infinite as his love and mercy, has no other object against which
he directs the mighty force of it, but only unrighteousness. He hates no
person for all the penal evils upon him, though they were more by ten
thousand times than Job was struck with, but only for his sin. Again, sin
being only evil, and an unmixed evil, there is nothing in it that can abate
the detestation of God, or balance his hatred of it ; there is not the least
grain of goodness in it, to incline him to the least afiection to any part of
it. This hatred cannot but be intense, for as the more any creature is
sanctified, the more is he advanced in the abhorrence of that which is con-
trary to holiness ; therefore God being the highest, most absolute and in-
finite holiness, doth infinitely, and therefore intensely, hate unholiness ;
being infinitely righteous, doth infinitely abhor unrighteousness ; being in-
finitely true, doth infinitely abhor falsity, as it is the greatest and most
deformed evil. As it is fi-om the righteousness of his nature that he hath
a content and satisfaction in righteousness, — Ps. xi. 7, ' The righteous Lord
loveth righteousness,' — so it is from the same righteousness of his nature
that he detests whatsoever is morally evil. As his nature therefore is in-
finite, so must his abhorrence be.

(3.) Therefore universally, because necesssarily and intensely. He doth
not hate it in one, and indulge it in another, but loathes it wherever he finds

EXOD. XV. ll.J god's HOLINESS. '199

it ; not one worker of iniquity is exempt from it : Ps. v. 5, * Thou hatest
all workers of iniquity.' For it is not sin as in this or that person, or as
great or little, but sin as sin, is the object of his hatred. And therefore
let the person be never so great, and have particular characters of his image
upon him, it secures him not from God's hatred of any evil action he shall
commit. He is a jealous God, jealous of his glory, Exod. xx. 5 ; a metaphor
taken from jealous husbands, who will not endure the least adultery in their
wives, nor God the least defection of man from his law. Ever}- act of sin
is a spiritual adultery, denying God to be the chief good, and giving that
prerogative by that act to some vile thing. He loves it no more in his own
people than he doth in his enemies ; he frees them not from his rod, the
testimony of his loathing their crimes. Whosoever sows iniquity, shall reap
affliction. It might be thought that he affected their dross, if he did not
refine them, and loved their filth, if he did not cleanse them ; because of
bis detestation of their sin, he will not spare them from the furnace, though
because of love to their persons in Christ, he will exempt them from Tophet.
How did the sword ever and anon drop down upon David's family after his
unworthy dealing in Uriah's case, and cut off ever and anon some of the
branches of it ! He doth sometimes punish it more severely in this life in
his own people, than in others. Upon Jonah's disobedience a storm pursues
him, and a whale devours him, while the profane world lived in their lusts
without control. Moses, for one act of unbelief, is excluded from Canaan,
when greater sinners attained that happiness. It is not a light punishment,
but a ' vengeance, he takes on their inventions,' Ps. xcix. 8, to manifest that
he hates sin as sin, and not because the worst persons commit it. Perhaps,
had a profane man touched the ark, the hand of God had not so suddenly
reached him ; but when Uzzah, a man zealous for him, as may be supposed
by his care for the support of the tottering ark, would step out of his place,
he strikes him down for his disobedient action, by the side of the ark, which
he would indirectly (as not being a Levite) sustain, 2 Sam. vi. 7. Nor did
our Saviour so sharply reprove the Pharisees, and turn so short from them
as he did from Petei-, when he gave a carnal advice, and contrary to that
n'herein was to be the greatest manifestation of God's holiness, viz., the
death of Christ, Mat. xvi. 23. He calls him Satan, a name sharper than
the title of the devil's children, wherewith he marked the Pharisees, and
given (besides him) to none but Judas, who made a profession of love to
him, and was outwardly ranked in the number of his disciples. A gardener
hates a weed the more, for being in the bed with the most precious flowers.
God's hatred is universally fixed against sin, and he hates it as much in
those whose persons shall not fall under his eternal anger, as being secured
in the arms of a Kedeemer, by whom the guilt is wiped off, and the filth
shall be totally washed away. Though he hates their sin, and cannot but
hate it, yet he loves their persons, as being united as members to the media-
tor and mystical head. A man may love a gangrened member, because it
is a member of his own body, or a member of a dear relation, but he loathes
the gangi-ene in it, more than in those wherein he is not so much concerned.

Though God's hatred of believers' persons is removed by faith in the
satisfactory death of Jesus Christ, yet his antipathy against sin was not
taken away by that blood ; nay, it was impossible it should. It was never
designed, nor had it any capacity to alter the unchangeable nature of God, but
to manifest the unspottedness of his will, and his eternal aversion to anything
that was contrary to the purity of his being, and the righteousness of his laws.

(4.) Perpetually. This must necessarily follow upon the others. He
can no more cease to hate impurity, than he can cease to love holiness. If

200 chaenock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

he should in the least instant approve of anything that is filthy, in that
moment he would disapprove of his own nature and being ; there would be
an interruption in his love of himself, which is as eternal as it is infinite.
How can he love any sin, which is contrary to his nature, but for one
moment, without hating his own nature, which is essentially contrary to
sin ? Two contraries cannot be loved at the same time ; God must first
begin to hate himself, before he can approve of any evil, which is directly
opposite to himself. We indeed are changed with a temptation, sometimes
bear an afiection to it, and sometimes testify an indignation against it ; but
God is always the same, -without any shadow of change, and is ' angry with
the wicked every day,' Ps. vii. 11, that is, uninterruptedly in the nature of
his anger, though not in the effects of it. God indeed may be reconciled to
the sinner, but never to the sin ; for then he should renounce himself, deny
his own essence and his own divinity, if his inclinations to the love of good-
ness, and his aversion from evil, could be changed ; if he suffered the con-
tempt of the one, and encouraged the practice of the other.

4. God is so holy, that he cannot but love holiness in others. Not that
he owes anything to his creature, but from the unspeakable holiness of his
nature, whence affections to all things that bear a resemblance of him do
flow ; as light shoots out from the sun, or any glittering body. It is essen-
tial to the infinite righteousness of his nature, to love righteousness wherever
he beholds it : Ps. xi. 7, ' The righteous Lord loveth righteousness.' He
cannot, because of his nature, but love that which bears some agreement
with his nature, that which is the curious draught of his own wisdom and
purity. Hs cannot but be delighted with a copy of himself ; he would not
have a holy nature, if he did not love holiness in every nature ; his own
nature would be denied by him, if he did not affect everything that had a
stamp of his own nature upon it. There was indeed nothing without God,
that could invite him to manifest such goodness to man, as he did in crea-
tion. But after he had stamped that rational nature with a righteousness
convenient for it, it was impossible but that he should ardently love that
impression of himself, because he loves his own deity, and consequently all
things which are any sparks and images of it. And were the devils capable
of an act of righteousness, the holiness of his nature would incline him to
love it, even in those dark and revolted spirits.

5. God is so holy, that he cannot positively will or encourage sin in any.
How can he give any encouragement to that which he cannot in the least
approve of, or look upon without loathing, not only the crime but the
criminal ? Light may sooner be the cause of darkness, than holiness itself
be the cause of unholiness, absolutely contrary to it ; it is a' contradiction,
that he that is the fountain of good should be the source of evil ; as if the
same fountain should bubble up both sweet and bitter streams, salt and
fresh, James iii. 11. Since whatsoever good is in man acknowledges God
for its author, it follows that men are evil by their own fault. There is no
need for men to be incited to that to which the corruption of their own
nature doth so powerfully bend them. Water hath a forcible principle in
its own nature to carry it downward ; it needs no force to hasten the motion :
' God tempts no man, but every man is drawn away by his own lusts,' James
i. 13, 14. All the preparations for glory are from God, Rom. ix. 23. But
men are said to be ' fitted to destruction,' ver. 22, but God is not said to fit
them ; they by their iniquities fit themselves for ruin, and he by his long-
suffering keeps the destruction from them for a while.

(1.) First, God cannot command any unrighteousness. As all virtue is
Bummed up in a love to God, so all iniquity is summed up in an enmity to

ExoD. XY. 11.] god's holiness. 201

God. Every wicked work declares a man an enemy to God : Col. i. 21,
' Enemies in your minds by wicked works.' If he could command his
creature anything which bears an enmity in its nature to himself, he
would then implicitly command the hatred of himself, and he would
be in some measure a hater of himself. He that commands another to
deprive him of his life, cannot be said to bear any love to his own life. God
can never hate himself, and therefore cannot command anything that is
hateful to him, and tends to a hating of him, and driving the creature
further from him. In that very moment that God should command such a
thing, he would cease to be good. What can be more absurd to imagine
than that infinite goodness should enjoin a thing contrary to itself, and con- ,
trary to the essential duty of a creature, and order him to do anything that
bespeaks an enmity to the nature of the Creator, or a deflowering and dis-
paraging his works ? God cannot but love himself, and his own goodness, —
he were not otherwise good, — and therefore cannot order the creature to do
anything opposite to his goodness, or anything hurtful to the creature itself,
as unrighteousness is.

(2.) Nor can God secretly inspire any evil into us. It is as much
against his nature to incline the heart to sin as it is to command it. As it
is impossible but that he should love himself, and therefore impossible to
enjoin anything that tends to a hatred of himself; by the same reason it is
as impossible that he should infuse such a principle in the heart that might
carry a man out to any act of enmity against him. To enjoin one thing,
and incline to another, would be an argument of such insincerity, unfaithful-
ness, contradiction to itself, that it cannot be conceived to fall within the
compass of the divine nature, Deut. xxxii. 4, who is a ' God without
iniquity,' because a God of truth and sincerity, 'just and right is he.'
To bestow excellent faculties upon man in creation, and incline him by a
sudden impulsion to things contrary to the true end of him, and induce
an inevitable ruin upon that work which he had composed with so much
wisdom and goodness, and pronounced good with so much delight and
pleasure, is inconsistent with that love which God bears to the creature of
his own framing ; to incline his will to that which would render him the
object of his hatred, the fuel for his justice, and sink him into deplorable
misery, it is most absurd and unchristianlike to imagine.

(3.) Nor can God necessitate man to sin. Indeed, sin cannot be com-
mitted by force ; there is no sin but is in some sort voluntary ; voluntary
in root, or voluntary in the branch ; voluntary by an immediate act of the
will, or voluntary by a general or natural inclination of the will. That is
not a crime to which a man is violenced, without any concurrence of the
faculties of the soul to that act ; it is indeed not an act, but a passion ; a man
that is forced is not an agent, but a patient under the force. But what
necessity can there be upon man from God, since he hath implanted such a
principle in him, that he cannot desire anything but what is good, either
really or apparently ? And if a man mistakes the object, it is his own fault ;
for God hath endowed him with reason to discern, and liberty of will to
choose upon that judgment.

And though it is to be acknowledged that God hath an absolute sovereign
dominion over his creature, without any limitation, and may do what he
pleases, and dispose of it according to his own will, as a potter doth with
his vessel, Rom. ix. 21, according as the church speaks, Isa. Ixiv. 8, ' We
are the clay, and thou our potter, and we all are the work of thy hand,'
yet he cannot pollute any undefiled creature by virtue of that sovereign
power, which he hath to do what he will with it, because such an act would

202 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

be contrary to the foundation and right of his dominion, which consists in
the excellency of his nature, his immense wisdom and unspotted purity.
If God should therefore do any such act, he would expunge the right of his
dominion, by blotting out that nature which renders him fit for that dominion,
and the exercise of it.* Any dominion which is exercised without the rules
of goodness is not a true sovereignty, but an insupportable tj'ranny. God
would cease to be a rightful sovereign if he ceased to be good, he would
cease to be good if he did command, necessitate or by any positive opera-
tion incline inwardly the heart of a creature directly to that which were
morally evil, and contrary to the eminency of his own nature.
. But that we may the better conceive of this, let us trace man in his first
fall, whereby he subjected himself and all his posterity to the curse of the law
and hatred of God ; we shall find no footsteps, either of precept, outward
force, or inward impulsion.f The plain story of man's apostasy dischargeth
God from any interest in the crime as an encouragement, and excuseth him
from any appearance of suspicion, when he shewed him the tree he had
reserved, as a mark of his sovereignty, and forbade him to eat of the fruit of
it; he backed the prohibition with the threatening the greatest evil, viz.,
death, which could be understood to imply nothing less than the loss of all
his happiness ; and in that couched an assurance of the perpetuity of his
felicity, if he did not rebelliously reach forth his hand to take and eat of
the fruit. Gen. ii. 16, 17. It is true, God had given that fruit an excel-
lency, a goodness for food, and a pleasantness to the eye, chap. iii. 6. He
had given man an appetite whereby he was capable of desiring so pleasant a
fruit, but God had:,;by creation ranged it under the command of reason, if
man would have kept it in its due obedience ; he had fixed a severe
threatening to bar the unlawful excursions of it ; he had allowed him a
multitude of other fruits in the garden, and given him liberty enough to
satisfy his curiosity in all except this only. Could there be anything more
obliging to man, to let God have his reserve of that one tree, than the grant
of all the rest, and more deterring from any disobedient attempt than so
strict a command, spirited with so dreadful a penalty ? God did not
solicit him to rebel against him. A solicitation to it, and a command against
it, were inconsistent. The devil assaults him, and God permitted it, and
stands as it were a spectator of the issue of the combat. There could be
no necessity upon man to listen to, and entertain, the suggestions of the
serpent. He had a power to resist him, and he had an answer ready for
all the devil's arguments, had they beeu multiphed to more than they were;
the opposing the order of God had been a sufficient confutation of all the
devil's plausible reasonings : That Creator who hath given me my being hath
ordered me not to eat of it. Though the pleasure of the fruit might allure
him, yet the force of his reason might have quelled the liquorishness of
his sense. The perpetual thinking of, and sounding out, the command of
God, had silenced both Satan and his own appetite, had disarmed the
tempter, and preserved his sensitive part in its due subjection. What
inclination can we suppose there could be from the Creator, when upon the
very first off'er of the temptation, Eve opposes to the tempter the prohibition
and threatening of God, and strains it to a higher peg than we find God had
delivered it in ? For in Gen. ii. 17, it is, ' you shall not eat of it; ' but she
adds. Gen. iii. 3, * neither shall you touch it,' which was a remark that
might have had more influence to restrain her. Had our first parents kept
this fixed upon their understandings and thoughts, that God had forbidden
any such act as the eating of the fruit, and that he was true to execute the
* Amyrald, Dissert, p. 103, 104. \ Amyrald, Defens. de Calvin, p. 161, 162.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 2C3

threatening he had uttered, of which truth of God they could not but have
a natural notion, with what ease might they have withstood the devil's
attack, and defeated his design ! And it had been easy with them to have
kept their understandings by the force of such a thought, from entertaining
any contrary imagination. There is no ground for any jealousy of any
encouragements, inward impulsions, or necessity from God in this affair.
A discharge of God from this first sin will easily induce a freedom from all
other sins which follow upon it.

God doth not then encourage, or excite, or incline to sin. How can he
excite to that which, when it is done, he will be sure to condemn ? How
can he be a righteous judge to sentence a sinner to misery for a crime acted
by a secret inspiration from himself ? Iniquity would deserve no reproof
from him, if he were any way positively the author of it. Were God the
author of it in us, what is the reason our own consciences accuse us for it,
and convince us of it ? That, being God's deputy, would not accuse us of
it, if the sovereign power by which it acts did incline us to it. How can he
be thought to excite to that which he hath enacted such severe laws to re-
strain, or incline man to that which he hath so dreadfully punished in his
Son, and which it is impossible but the excellency of his nature must incline
him eternally to hate ? We may sooner imagine that a pure flame shall
engender cold, and darkness be the offspring of a sunbeam, as imagine such a
thing as this. ' What shall we say ? Is there unrighteousness with God ?
God forbid.' The apostle execrates such a thought, Rom. ix. 14.

6. God cannot act any evil in or by himself. If he cannot approve of
sin in others, nor excite any to iniquity, which is less, he cannot commit
evil himself, which is greater. What he cannot positively will in another
can never be willed in himself; he cannot do evil through ignorance, because
of his infinite knowledge ; nor through weakness, because of his infinite
power ; nor through malice, because of his infinite rectitude. He cannot
will any unjust thing, because, having an infinitely perfect understanding,
he cannot judge that to be true which is false, or that to be good which is
evil ; his will is regulated by his wisdom. If he could will any unjust and
irrational thing, his will would be repugnant to his understanding ; there
would be a disagreement in God, will against mind, and will against wis-
dom. He being the highest reason, the first truth, cannot do an unreason-
able, false, defective action. It is not a defect in God that he cannot do
evil, but a fulness and excellency of power. As it is not a weakness in the
light, but the perfection of it, that it is unable to produce darkness. God
is ' the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,' James i. 17 No-
thing pleases him, nothing is acted by him, but what is beseeming the
infinite excellency of his own nature. The voluntary necessity whereby
God cannot be unjust renders him a ' God blessed for ever.' He would
hate himself as the chief good, if, in any of his actions, he should disagree
with his goodness. He cannot do any unworthy thing, not because he wants
an infinite power, but because he is possessed of an infinite wisdom, and
adorned with an infinite purity ; and, being infinitely pure, cannot have
the least mixture of impurity. As if you can suppose tire infinitely hot, you
cannot suppose it to have the least mixture of coldness ; the better any-
thing is, the more unable it is to do evil. God being the only goodness, can
as little be changed in his goodness as in his essence.

II. The second thing.

The next inquiry is, the proof that God is holy, or the manifestation of
it. Polity is as requisite to the blessedness of God as to the being of God.

204 chaexock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

As he could not be God without being blessed, so he could not be blessed
without being holy. He is called by the title of blessed, as well as by that
of holy : Mark xiv. 61, ' Art thou the Christ, the Son of the blessed ? ' Un-
righteousness is a misery and turbulency in any spirit wherein it is, for it
is a privation'of an excellency which ought to be in every intellectual being ;
and what can follow upon the privation of an excellency but unquietness and
grief, the moth of happiness ! An unrighteous man,^as an unrighteous man,
can never be blessed, though he were in a local heaven. Had God the least
spot upon his purity, it would render him as miserable in the midst of his
infinite sufficiency as iniquity renders a man in the confluence of his earthly
enjoyments ; the holiness and felicity of God are inseparable in him. The
apostle intimates that the heathen made an attempt to sully his blessedness,
when they would liken him to corruptible, mutable, impure man : Rom.
i. 23, 25, * They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image
made like to corruptible man ;' and after he entitles God, a ' God blessed
for ever.' The gospel is therefore called ' the glorious gospel of the
blessed God,' 1 Tim. i. 11, in regard of the holiness of the gospel precepts,
and in regard of the declaration of the holiness of God in all the streams
and branches ; wherein his purity, in which his blessedness consists, is as
illustrious as any other perfection of the divine being. God hath highly
manifested this attribute in the state of nature, in the legal administration,
in the dispensation of the gospel. His wisdom, goodness, and power are
declared in creation, his sovereign authority in his law, his grace and
mercy in the gospel, and his righteousness in all. Suitable to this three-
fold state may be that ternal repetition of his holiness in the prophecy, Isa.
vi. 3, holy as creator and benefactor ; holy as lawgiver and judge ; holy as
restorer and redeemer.

1. His holiness appears as he is creator, in framing man in a perfect up-
rightness. Angels, as made by God, could not be evil, for God beheld his
own work with pleasure, and could not have pronounced them all good had
some been created pure, and others impure ; two moral contrarieties could
not be good. The angels had a first estate, wherein they were happy. Jade
6; and had they not left their own habitation and state, they could not
have been miserable ; but because the Scripture speaks only of the creation
of man, we will consider that the human nature was well strung and tuned
by God, according to the note of his own holiness : Eccles. vii. 29, ' God
hath made man upright.' He had declared his power in other creatures, but
would declare in his rational creature what he most valued in himself ; and
therefore created him upright, with a wisdom which is the rectitude of the
mind, with a purity which is the rectitude of the will and afiections. He
had declared a purity in other creatures, as much as they were capable of,
viz. in the exact tuning them to answer one another ; and that God, who
so well tuned and composed other creatures, would not make man a jarring
instrument, and place a cracked creature to be lord of the rest of his earthly
fabric. God being holy, could not set his seal upon any rational creature,
but the impression would be like himself, pure and holy also ; he could not
be created with an error in his understanding, that had been inconsistent
with the goodness of God to his rational creature ; if so, the erroneous
motion of the will, which was to follow the dictates of the understanding,
could not have been imputed to him as his crime, because it would have
been, not a voluntary, but a necessary effect of his nature ; had there been
an error in the first wheel, the error of the next could not have been im-
puted to the nature of that, but to the irregular motion of the first wheel in
the engine. The sin of men and angels proceeded not from any natural de-

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 205

feet in their understandings, but from inconsideration. He that was the
author of harmony in his other creatures, could not be the author of dis-
order in the chief of his works. Other creatures were his footsteps, but
man was his image : Gen. i. 26, 27, ' Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness ; ' which, though it seems to imply no more in that place than
an image of his dominion over the creatures, yet the apostle raises it a
peg higher, and gives us a larger interpretation of it : Col. iii. 10, ' And
have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of
him that created him ; ' making it to consist in a resemblance to his right-
eousness. Image, say some, notes the form, as man was a spirit in regard
of the soul ; likeness notes the quality implanted in his spiritual nature.
The image of God was drawn in him, both as he was a rational and as he was
a holy creature. The creatures manifested the being of a superior power as
their cause, but the righteousness of the first man evidenced not only a
sovereign power, as the donor of his being, but a holy power, as the pattern
of his work. God appeared to be a holy God in the righteousness of his
creature, as well as an understanding God in the reason of his creature,
while he formed him with all necessary knowledge in his mind, and all
necessary uprightness in his will. The law of love to God, with his whole
soul, his whole mind, his whole heart and strength, was originally writ upon
his nature. All the parts of his nature were framed in a moral conformity
with God, to answer his law, and imitate God in his purity, which consists
in a love of himself, and his own goodness and excellency. Thus doth the
clearness of the stream point us to the purer fountain, and the brightness of
the beam evidence a greater splendour in the sun which shot it out.

2. His holiness appears in his laws, as he is a lawgiver and a judge.
Since man was bound to be subject to God as a creature, and had a capacity
to be ruled by the law, as an understanding and wiUing creature, God gave
him a law taken from the depths of his holy nature, and suited to the origi-
nal faculties of man. The rules which God hath fixed in the world are not
the resolves of bare will, but result particularly from the goodness of his
nature ; they are nothing else but the transcripts of his infinite detestation
of sin, as he is the unblemished governor of the world. This being the
most adorable property of his nature, he hath impressed it upon that law
which he would have inviolably observed as a perpetual rule for our actions,
that we may every moment think of this beautiful perfection. God can
command nothing, but what hath some similitude with the rectitude of his
own nature ; all his laws, every paragraph of them therefore, scent of this
and glitter with it : Deut. iv. 8, ' What nation hath statutes and judgments
so righteous as all this law I set before you this day ?' And therefore they are
compared to fine gold, that hath no speck or dross, Ps. xix. 10.

This purity is evident,

(1 .) In the moral law, or law of nature ;

(2.) In the ceremonial law ;

(3.)- In the allurements annexed to it for keeping it, and the affrightments
to restrain from the breaking of it ;

(4.) In the judgments inflicted for the violation of it.

(1.) In the moral law, which is therefore dignified with the title of holy
twice in one verse, Rom. vii. 12, ' Wherefore the law is holy, and the com-
mandment is holy, just, and good,' it being the express image of God's will,
as our Saviour was of his person, and bearing a resemblance to the purity of
his nature. The tables of this law were put into the ark, that as the mercy-
seat was to represent the grace of God, so the law was to represent the

206 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

holiness of God. The psalmist, after he had spolien of the glory of God
in the heavens, Ps. xix. 1, wherein the power of God is exposed to our
view, introduceth the law, wherein the purity of God is evidenced to our minds,
ver. 7,8;* perfect, pure, clean, righteous ' are the titles given to it. It
is clearer in holiness than the sun is in brightness, and more mighty in itself
to command the conscience, than the sun is to run its race. As the holiness
of the Scripture demonstrates the divinity of its author, so the hoUness
of the law doth the purity of the lawgiver.

[1.] The purity of this law is seen in the matter of it. It prescribes all
that becomes a creature towards God, and all tbat becomes one creature to-
wards another of his own rank and kind. The image of God is complete in
the holiness of the first table, and the righteousness of the second ; which is
intimated by the apostle, Eph. iv. 24, the one being the rule of what we owe
to God, the other being the rule of what we owe to man ; there is no good
but it enjoins, and no evil but it disowns. It is not sickly and lame in any
part of it ; not a good action but it gives it its due praise, and not an evil
action but it sets a condemning mark upon. The commands of it are
frequently in Scripture called judr/ments, because they rightly judge of good
and evil,and are a clear light to inform the judgment of man in the knowledge
of both. By this was the understanding of David enlightened to know every
false way, and to hate it, Ps. cxix. 104. There is no case can happen but
may meet with a determination from it ; it teaches men the noblest manner
of living a life like God himself, honourably for the lawgiver, and joyfully
for the subject. It directs us to the highest end, sets us at a distance from
all base and sordid practices ; it proposeth light to the understanding, and
goodness to the will. It would tune all the strings, set right all the orders
of mankind ; it censures the least mote, countenanceth not any stain in life.
Not a wanton glance can meet with any justification from it, Mat. v. 28,
not a rash anger but it frowns upon, ver. 22. As the law^giver wants no-
thin» as an addition to his blessedness, so his law wants nothing as a supple-
ment to its perfection. Dent. iv. 2. What our Saviour seems to add, is not
an addition to mend any defects, but a restoration of it from the corrupt
glosses, wherewith the scribes and Pharisees had eclipsed the brightness of
it ; they had curtailed it and diminished part of its authority, cutting ofi" its
empire over the least evil, and left its power only to check the grosser prac-
tices. But Christ restores it to the due extent of its sovereignty, and shews
it in those dimensions in which the holy men of God considered it as
' exceeding broad,' Ps. cxix. 96, reaching to all actions, all motions, all cir-
cumstances attending them, full of inexhaustible treasures of righteousness ;
and though this law since the fall doth irritate sin, it is no disparagement,
but a testimony to the righteousness of it, which the apostle manifests by
his wherefore, Rom. vii. 8, ' Sin, taking occasion by the commandment,
wrought in me all manner of concupiscence,' and repeating the same sense,
ver. 11, subjoins a wJurefore, verse 12, 'Wherefore the law is holy.' The
risinc of men's sinful hearts against the law of God, when it strikes with its
preceptive and minatory parts upon their consciences, evidenceth the holi-
ness of the law and the lawgiver.

In its own nature it is a directing rule, but the malignant nature of sin is
exasperated by it, as an hostile quality in a creature will awaken itself at
the appearance of its enemy. The purity of this beam and transcript of
God bears witness to a greater clearness and beauty in the sun and original.
Undefiled streams manifest an untainted fountain.

[2.] It is seen in the manner of its precepts ; as it prescribes all good and
forbids all evil, so it doth enjoin the one, and banish the other as such. The

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's noLTNEss. 207

laws of men command virtuous things, not as virtuous in themselves, hut as
useful for human society, which the magistrate is the conservator of, and the
guardian of justice.* The laws of men contain not all the precepts of virtue,
but only such as are accommodated to their customs, and are useful to
preserve the ligaments of their government. The desi>:jn of them is not so
much to render the subjects good men, as good citizens ; they order the
practice of those virtues that may strengthen civil society, and discoun-
tenance those vices only which weaken the sinesvs of it ; but God, being the
guardian of universal righteousness, doth not only enact the observance of all
' righteousness,' but the observance of it as righteousness. He commands
that which is just in itself, enjoins virtues as virtues, and prohibits vices as
vices, as they are profitable or injurious to ourselves as well as to others.

Men command temperance and justice not as virtues in themselves, but
as they prevent disorder and confusion in a commonwealth ; and forbid
adultery and theft, not as vices in themselves, but as they are entrenchments
upon property, not as hurtful to the person that commits them, but as
hurtful to the person against whose right they are committed. Upon this
account perhaps Paul applauds the holiness of the law of God, in regard of
its own nature as considered in itself, more than he doth the justice of it in
regard of man, and the goodness and conveniency of it to the world ; Rom.
vii. 12, the law is holy twice, ^nA. just and good but once.

[3.] In the spiritual extent of it. The most righteous powers of the
world do not so much regard in their laws what the inward affections of then-
subjects are ; the external acts are only the objects of their decrees, either to
encourage them if they be useful, or discourage them if they be hurtful to
the community'; and indeed they can do no other, for they have no power
proportioned to inward affections, since the inward disposition falls not under
their censure, and it would be foolish for any legislative power to make such
laws, which it is impossible for it to put in execution. They can prohibit
the outward acts of theft and murder, but they cannot command the love of
God, the hatred of sin, the contempt of the world ; they cannot prohibit
unclean thoughts and the atheism of the heart. But the law of God sur-
mounts in righteousness all the laws of the best regulated commonwealths
in the world ; it restrains the licentious heart as well as the violent hand,
it damps the very first bubblings of corrupt nature, orders a purity in
the spring, commands a clean fountain, clean streams, clean vessels. It
would frame the heart to an inward, as well as the life to an outward right-
eousness, and make the inside purer than the outside. It forbids the first
belchings of a murderous or adulterous intention ; it obligeth man as a
rational creature, and therefore exacts a conformity of every rational faculty,
and of whatsoever is under the command of them. It commands the
private closet to be free from the least cobweb, as well as the outward porch
to be clean from mire and dust. It frowns upon all stains and pollutions of
the most retired thoughts ; hence the apostle calls it a spiritual law, Rom.
vii. 14, as not political, but extending its force further than the frontiers of
the man, placing its ensigns in the metropoUs of the heart and mind, and
curbing with its sceptre] the inward motions of the spirit, and commanding
over the secrets of every man's breast.

[4.] In regard to the perpetuity of it. The purity and perpetuity of it
are linked together by the psalmist, Ps. xix. 9, * The fear of the Lord is
clean, enduring for ever ;' the fear of the Lord, that is, that law which com-
mands the fear and worship of God, and is the rule of it ; and indeed, God
values it at such a rate, that rather than part with a tittle, or let the honour of
* Ames de Consc. lib. v. cap. i. ques. 7.

208 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

it lie in the dust, he would not only let heaven and earth pass away, but expose
his Son to death for the reparation of the wrong it had sustained. So holy it
is, that the holiness and righteousness of God cannot dispense with it, cannot
abrogate it, without despoiling himself of his own being. It is a copy of the
eternal law ! Can he ever abrogate the command of love to himself, with-
out shewing some contempt of his own excellency and very being ? Before
he can enjoin a creature not to love him, he must make himself unworthy
of love and worthy of hatred ; this would be the highest unrighteousness, to
order us to hate that which is only worthy of our highest affections. So God
cannot change the first command, and order us to worship many gods ; this
would be against the excellency and unity of God, for God cannot constitute
another God, or make anything worthy of an honour equal with himself.*
Those things that are good only because they are commanded, are alterable
by God ; those things that are intrinsecally and essentially good, and therefore
commanded, are unalterable as long as the holiness and righteousness of God
stand firm. The intrinsic goodness of the moral law, the concern God hath
for it, the perpetuity of the precepts of the first table, and the care he hath had
to imprint the precepts of the second upon the minds and consciences of men,
as the author of nature for the preservation of the world, manifests the holi-
ness of the lawmaker and governor.

(2.) His holiness appears in the ceremonial law ; in the variety of sacri-
fices for sin, wherein he writ his detestation of unrighteousness in bloody
characters. His holiness was more constantly expressed in the continual
sacrifices, than in those rarer sprinklings of judgments now and then upon
the world ; which often reached not the worst, but the most moderate sin-
ners, and were the occasions of the questioning of the righteousness of his
providence both by Jews and Gentiles. In judgments, his purity was only
now and then manifest ; by his long patience, he might be imagined by some
reconciled to their crimes, or not much concerned in them ; but by the morn-
ing and evening sacrifice he witnessed a perpetual and uninterrupted abhor-
rence of whatsoever was evil.

Besides those, the occasional washings and sprinklings upon ceremonial
defilements, which polluted only the body, gave an evidence that everything
that had a resemblance to evil was loathsome to him. Add also the prohi-
bitions of eating such and such creatures as were filthy ; as the swine that
wallowed in the mire, a fit emblem for the profane and brutish sinner ;
which had a moral signification, both of the loathsomeness of sin to God, and
the aversion themselves ought to have to everything that was filthy.

(3.) His holiness appears in the allurements annexed to the law for keep-
ing it, and the affrightments to restrain from the breaking of it : both pro-
mises and threatenings have their fundamental root in the holiness of God,
and are both branches of this peculiar perfection. As they respect the
nature of God, they are declarations of his hatred of sin and his love of
righteousness ; the one belong to his threatenings, the other to his promises ;
both join together to represent this divine perfection to the creature, and to
excite to an imitation in the creature. In the one, God would render sin
odious, because dangerous, and curb the practice of evil, which would other-
wise be licentious ; in the other, he would commend righteousness, and
excite a love of it, which would otherwise be cold. By these God suits the
two great affections of men, fear and hope, both the branches of self-love in
man. The promises and threatenings are both the branches of holiness in
God. The end of the promises is the same with the exhortation the apostle
concludes from them : 2 Cor. vii. 1, * Having these promises, let us cleanse
* Suarez.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 209

ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear
of God.' As the end of precepts is to direct, the end of threatenings is to
deter from iniquity ; so that of the promises is to allure to obedience. Thus
God breathes out his love to righteousness in every promise, his hatred of
sin in every threatening. The rewards offered in the one are the smiles of
pleased holiness, and the curses thundered in the other are the sparklings
of enraged righteousness.

(4.) His holiness appears in the judgments inflicted for the violation of
this law. Divine holiness is the root of divine justice, and divine justice is
the triumph of divine holiness. Hence both are expressed in Scripture by
one word of righteousness, which sometimes signifies the rectitude of the
divine nature, and sometimes the vindicative stroke of his arm : Ps. ciii. 6,
' The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.'
So Dan. ix. 7, ' Righteousness,' that is, justice, ' belongs to thee.' The
vials of his wrath are filled from his implacable aversion to iniquity. Ail
penal evils showered down upon the heads of wicked men, spread their root
in, and branch out from, this perfection. All the dreadful storms and tem-
pests in the world are blown up by it. Why doth he ' rain snares, fire and
brimstone, and a horrible tempest ?' Because the righteous Lord ' loveth
righteousness,' Ps. xi. 6, 7. And (as was observed before) when he was
going about the dreadfullest work that ever was in the world, the overturning
the Jewish state, hardening the hearts of that unbeHeving people, and cashier-
ing a nation, once dear to him, from the honour of his protection, his
hoHness, as the spring of all this, is applauded by the seraphims, Isa. vi. 3,
compared with ver. 9-11, &c. Impunity argues the approbation of a crime,
and punishment the abhorrency of it. The greatness of the crime, and the
righteousness of the Judge, are the first natural sentiments that arise in the
minds of men, upon the appearance of divine judgments in the world, by
those that are near them.* As when men see gibbets erected, scafi'olds pre-
pared, instruments of death and torture provided, and grievous punishments
inflicted, the first reflection in the spectators is the malignity of the crime,
and the detestation the governors are possessed with.

[1.] How severely hath he punished his most noble creatures for it. The
once glorious angels, upon whom he had been at greater cost than upon other
creatures, and drawn more lively lineaments of his own excellency, upon the
transgression of his law are thrown into the furnace of justice, without any
mercy to pity them, Jude 6. And though there were but one sort of crea-
tures upon the earth that bore his image, and were only fit to publish and
keep up his honour below the heavens, yet upon their apostasy (though upon
a temptation from a subtile and insinuating spirit) the man, with all his pos-
terity, is sentenced to misery in life, and death at last; and the woman, with
all her sex, have standing punishments inflicted on them ; which as they
have begun in their persons, were to reach as far as the last member of their
successive generations. So holy is God, that he will not endure a spot in
his choicest work. Men, indeed, when there is a crack in an excellent piece
of work, or a stain upon a rich garment, do not cast it away ; they value it
for the remaining excellency, more than hate it for the contracted spot ; but
God saw no excellency in his creature worthy regarding, after the image of
that which he most esteemed in himself was defaced.

[2.] How detestable to him are the very instruments of sin. For the ill
use the serpent (an irrational creature) was put to by the devil, as an instru-
ment in the fall of man, the whole brood of those animals are cursed : Gen.
iii. 14, ' Cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field.' Not
* Amyraut, Moral, torn. v. p. 388.

VOL. II. o

210 chaenock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

only the devil's head is threatened to be for ever bruised, and (as some think)
rendered irrecoverable upon this further testimony of his malice in the seduc-
tion of man, who perhaps, without this new act, might have been admitted
into the arms of mercy, notwithstanding his first sin, — though the Scripture
gives us no account of this, only this is the only sentence we read of pro-
nounced against the devil, which puts him into an irrecoverable state by a
mortal bruising of his head, — but, I say, he is not only punished, but the
organ whereby he blew in his temptation, is put into a worse condition than
it was before. Thus God hated the sponge whereby the devil deformed his
beautiful image ; thus God, to manifest his detestation of sin, ordered the
beast, whereby any man was slain, to be slain as well as the malefactor. Lev.
XX. 15. The gold and silver that had been abused to idolatry, and were the
ornaments of images, though good in themselves, and incapable'of a criminal
nature, were not to be brought into their houses, but detested and abhorred
by them, because they were cursed, and an abomination to the Lord. See
with what loathing expressions this law is enjoined to them, Deut. vii. 25, 26.
So contrary is the holy nature of God to every sin, that it curseth everything
that is instrumental in it.

[3.] How detestable is everything to him that is in the sinner's possession !
The \evj earth, which God had made Adam the proprietor of, was ' cursed
for his sake,' Gen. iii. 17, 18. It lost its beauty, and lies languishing to
this day ; and notwithstanding the redemption by Christ, hath not recovered
its health, nor is it like to do, till the completing the fruits of it upon the
children of God, Rom. viii. 20-22. The whole lower creation was made
* subject to vanity,' and put into pangs upon the sin of man, by the righteous-
ness of God detesting his offence. How often hath his implacable aversion
from sin been shewn, not only in his judgments upon the ofl'ender's person,
but by wrapping up in the same judgment those which stood in a near rela-
tion to them ! Achan, with his children and cattle, are overwhelmed with
stones, and burned together, Josh. vii. 24, 25. In the destruction of^Sodom,
not only the grown malefactors, but the young spawn, the infants (at present
incapable of the same wickedness), and their cattle, were burned up by the
same fire from heaven ; and the place where their habitations stood is at
this day partly a heap of ashes, and partly an infectious lake, that chokes
any fish that swim into it from Jordan, and stifles (as is related) by its
vapour any bird that attempts to fly over it. Oh, how detestable is sin to
God, that causes him to turn a pleasant land, as the garden of the Lord (as
it is styled, Gen. xiii. 10) into a lake of sulphur ; to make it, both in his
word and works, as a lasting monument of his abhorrence of evil !

[4.] What design hath God in all these acts of severity and vindictive jus-
tice, but to set off" the lustre of his holiness ? He testifies himself concerned
for those laws, which he hath set as hedges and limits to the lusts of men ;
and therefore when he breathes forth his fiery indignation against a people,
he is said to get himself honour ; as when he intended the Red Sea should
swallow up the Egyptian army, Exod. xiv. 17, 18, which Moses in his
triumphant song echoes back again : Exod. xv. 1, * Thou hast triumphed
gloriously ;' gloriously in his holiness, which is the glory of his nature, as
Moses himself interprets it in the text. When men will not own the holiness
of God in a way of duty, God will vindicate it in a way of justice and punish-
ment. In the destruction of Aaron's sons, that were will-worshippers, and
would take strange fire, sanctified and glorified are coupled. Lev. x. 3. He
glorified himself in that act, in vindicating his holiness before all the people,
declaring that he will not endure sin and disobedience. He doth, therefore,
in this life more severely punish the sins of his people, when they presume

ExoD. XV. 11. J god's holiness. 211

upon any act of disobedience, for a testimony, that the nearness and dear-
ness of any person to him, shall not make him uuconcerned in his holiness,
or be a plea for impurity. The end of all his judgments is to witness to the
world his abominating of sin. To punish and witness against men, are one
and the same thing : Micah i. 2, * The Lord shall witness against you ;' and
it is the witness of God's holiness : Hosea v. 5, ' And the pride of Israel
doth testify to his face.' One renders it, the excellency of Israel, and under-
stands it of God ; the word ]')i^X which is here in our translation pride, is
rendered excellency : Amos viii, 7, ' The Lord hath sworn by his excellency,'
which is interpreted holiness : Amos iv, 2, ' The Lord hath sworn by his
holiness.' What is the issue or end of this swearing by holiness, and of his
excellency testifying against them ? In all those places you will find them
to be sweeping judgments : in one, Israel and Ephraim shall ' fall in their
iniquity ;' in another, he will * take them away with hooks, and their poste-
rity with fish-hooks ;' and in another, he would ' never forget any of their
works.' He that punisheth wickedness in those he before used with the
greatest tenderness, furnisheth the world with an undeniable evidence of the
detestableness of it to him. "Were not judgments sometimes poured out
upon the world, it would be believed that God were rather an approver than
an enemy to sin.

To conclude ; since God hath made a stricter law to guide men, annexed
promises above the merit of obedience to allure them, and threatenings
dreadful enough to afi"right men from disobedience, he cannot be the cause
of sin, nor a lover of it. How can he be the author of that which he so
severely forbids, or love that which he delights to 'punish, or be fondly in-
dulgent to any evil, when he hates the ignorant instruments in the offences
of his reasonable creatures ?

3. The holiness of God appears in our restoration. It is in the glass of
the gospel we ' behold the glory of the Lord,' 2 Cor. iii. 18 ; that is, the
glory of the Lord, into whose image we are changed ; but we are changed
into nothing as the image of God but into holiness. We bore not upon us
by creation, nor by regeneration, the image of any other perfection. We
cannot be changed into his omnipotence, omniscience, &c., but into the
image of his righteousness. This is the pleasing and glorious sight the
gospel mirror darts in our eyes. The whole scene of redemption is nothing
else but a discovery of judgment and righteousness: Isa. i. 27, *Zion shall
be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.'
.. (1.) This holiness of God appears in the manner of our restoration, viz.,
by the death of Christ. Not all the vials of judgments that have or shall be
poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner's
conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against the rebellious
devils, nor the groans of the damned creatures, give such a demonstration
of God's hatred of sin, as the wrath of God let loose upon his Son. Never
did divine holiness appear more beautiful and lovely than at the time our
Saviour's countenance was most marred in the midst of his dying groans.
This himself acknowledges in that prophetical psalm, Ps. xxii. 1, 2, when
God had turned his smiling face from him, and thrust his sharp knife into
his heart, which forced that terrible cry from him, * My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me ? ' He adores this perfection of holiness, ver. 3,
' but thou art holy.' Thy holiness is the spring of all this sharp agony, and
for this thou inhabitest, and shalt for ever inhabit, the praises of all thy
Israel. Holiness drew the veil between God's countenance and our Sa-
viour's soul. Justice indeed gave the stroke, but holiness ordered it. In this
his purity did sparkle, and his irreversible justice manifested that all those

212 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

that commit sin are worthy of death ; this was the perfect index of his
righteousness, Rom. iii. 29, that is, of his holiness and truth. Then it was
that 'God, that is holy, was sanctified in righteousness,' Isa. v. 16.

It appears the more, if you consider,

[l.J The dignity of the Redeemer's person. One that had been from
eternity, had laid the foundations of the world, had been the object of the
divine delight. He that was God ' blessed for ever ' becomes a curse ; he
who was blessed by angels, and by whom God blessed the world, must be
seized with horror. The Son of eternity must bleed to death. Where did
ever sin appear so irreconcilable to God ? where did God ever break out
BO furiously in his detestation of iniquity ? The Father would have the most
excellent person, one next in order to himself, and equal to him in all the
glorious perfections of his nature, Phil. ii. 6, die on a disgraceful cross, and
be exposed to the flames of divine wrath, rather than sin should live, and
his holiness remain for ever disparaged by the violations of his law.

[2.] The near relation he stood in to the Father. He was his own Son
that he delivered up, Rom. viii. 32, his essential image, as dearly beloved
by him as himself; yet he would abate nothing of his hatred of those sins
imputed to one so dear to him, and who never had done anything contrary
to his will. The strong cries uttered by him could not cause him to cut off
the least fringe of this royal garment, nor part with a thread the robe of his
holiness was woven'with. The torrent of wrath is opened upon him, and
the Father's heart beats not in the least notice of tenderness to sin in the
midst of his Son's agonies. God seems to lay aside the bowels of a father,
and put on the garb of an irreconcilable enemy.* Upon which account,
probably, our Saviour in the midst of his passion gives him the title of God,
not of Father, the title he usually before addressed to him with: Mat.
xxvii. 46, 'My God, my God,' not ' My Father, my Father, why hast thou
forsaken me ? ' He seems to hang upon the cross like a disinherited son,
while he appeared in the garb and rank of a sinner. Then was his head
loaded with curses, when he stood under that sentence of ' Cursed is every
one that hangs upon a tree,' Gal. iii. 13, and looked as one forlorn and
rejected by the divine purity and tenderness. God dealt not with him as if
he had been one in so near a relation to him. He left him not the will only
of the instruments of his death, he would have the chiefest blow himself of
bruising of him: Isa. liii. 10, 'It pleased the Lord to bruise him; ' the
Lord, because the power of creatures could not strike a blow strong enough
to satisfy and secure the rights of infinite holiness. It was therefore a cup
tempered and put into his hands by his Father ; a cup given him to drink.
In other judgments, he lets out his wrath against his creatures ; in this, he
lets out his wrath (as it were) against himself, against his Son, one as dear
to him as himself. As in his making creatures, his power over nothing to
bring it into being appeared, but in pardoning sin he hath power over him-
self; so in punishing creatures, his holiness appears in his wrath against
creatures, against sinners by inherency. But by punishing sin in his Son,
his holiness sharpens his wrath against him who was his equal, and only a
reputed sinner. As if his affection to his own holiness surmounted his affec-
tion to his Son ; for he chose to suspend the breakings out of his affections
to his Son, and see him plunged in a sharp and ignominious misery, with-
out giving him any visible token of his love, rather than see his holiness lie
groaning under the injuries of a transgressing world.

[3.] The value he puts upon his holiness appears further, in the advance-
ment of this redeeming person after his death. Our Saviour was advanced
* Lingend., torn. iii. p. 699, 700.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 213

not barely for his dying, but for the respect he had in his death to this
attribute of God. Heb. i. 9, ' Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated
iniquity ; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of
gladness,' &c. By righteousness is meant this perfection, because of the
opposition of it to iniquity. Some think therefore to be the final cause ; as
if this were the sense, ' Thou art anointed with the oil of gladness, that thou
mightest love righteousness, and hate iniquity.' But the Holy Ghost seem-
ing to speak in this chapter not only of the Godhead of Christ, but of his
exaltation, the doctrine whereof he had begun in ver. 3, and prosecutes in
the following verses, I would rather understand therefore, for this cause, or
reason, hath God anointed thee, not to this end. Christ indeed had an
unction of grace, whereby he was fitted for his mediatory work ; he had also
an unction of glory, whereby he was rewarded for it. In the first regard, it
was a qualif3ang him for his office ; in the second regard, it was a solemn
inaugurating him in his royal authority. And the reason of his being
settled upon a throne for ever and ever is because he loved righteousness.
He suffered himself to be pierced to death, that sin, the enemy of God's
purity, might be destroyed, and the honour of the law, the image of God's
holiness, might be repaired and fulfilled in the fallen creature. He restored
the credit of divine holiness in the world, in manifesting by his death God
an irreconcilable enemy to all sin, in abolishing the empire of sin, so hate-
ful to God, and restoring the rectitude of nature, and new framing the image
of God in his chosen ones.

And God so valued this vindication of his holiness, that he confers upon
him, in his human nature, an eternal royalty and empire over angels and
men. Holiness was the great attribute respected by Christ in his dying, and
manifested in his death; and for his love to this, God would bestow an
honour upon his person in that nature wherein he did vindicate the honour
of so dear a perfection. In the death of Christ, he shewed his resolution to
preserve its rights; in the exaltation of Christ, he evidenced his mighty
pleasure for the vindication of it; in both, the infinite value he had for it,
as dear to him as his life and glory.

[4.] It may be farther considered, that in this way of redemption, his
holiness in the hatred of sin seems to be valued above any other attribute.
He proclaims the value of it above the person of his Son, since the divine
nature of the Redeemer is disguised, obscured, and veiled, in oi'der to the re-
storing the honour of it. And Christ seems to value it above his own person,
since he submitted himself to the reproaches of men, to clear this perfection
of the divine nature, and make it illustrious in the eyes of the world. You
heard before, at the beginning of the handling this argument, it was the
beauty of the Deity, the lustre of his nature, the link of all his attributes,
his very life ; he values it equal with himself, since he swears by it as well
as by his life. And none of his attributes would have a due decorum with-
out it. It is the glory of power, mercy, justice, wisdom, that they are holy ;
so that though God had an infinite tenderness and compassion to the fallen
creatures, yet it should not extend itself in his rehef to the prejudice of the
rights of his purity. He would have this triumph in the tenderness of hia
mercy as well as the severities of his justice. His mercy had not appeared
in its true colours, nor attained a regular end, without vengeance on sin.
It would have been a compassion that would (in sparing the sinner) have
encouraged the sin, and affronted holiness in the issues of it. Had he dis-
persed his compassions about the world without the regard to his hatred of
sin, his mercy had been too cheap, and his holiness had been contemned.
His mercy would not have triumphed in his own nature whilst his holi-

214 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

ness had suffered. He had exercised a mercy with the impairing his own
glory.

But now in this way of redemption, the rights of both ai'e secured, both
have their due lustre. The odiousness of sin is equally discovered with the
greatness of his compassions ; an infinite abhorrence of sin, and an infinite
love to the world march hand in hand together. Never was so much of the
irreconcilableness of sin to him set forth, as in the moment he was opening
his bowels in the reconciliation of the sinner. Sin is made the chiefest
mark of his displeasure, while the poor creature is made the highest object
of divine pity. There could have been no motion of mercy with the least
injury to purity and holiness. In this way ' mercy and truth,' mercy to the
misery of the creature, and truth to the purity of the law, • have met to-
gether ; ' the righteousness of God, and the peace of the sinner, * have kissed
each other,' Ps. Ixxxv. 10.

(2.) The holiness of God in his hatred of sin appears in our justification,
and the conditions he requires of all that would enjoy the benefit of redemp-
tion. His wisdom hath so tempered all the conditions of it, that the honour
of his holiness is as much preserved as the sweetness of his mercy is experi-
mented by us. All the conditions are records of his exact purity, as well as
of his condescending grace. Our justification is not by the imperfect works
of creatures, but by an exact and infinite righteousness, as great as that of
the Deity which had been offended ; it being the righteousness of a divine
person, upon which account it is called the ' righteousness of God,' not only
in regard of God's appointing it, and God's accepting it, but as it is a right-
eousness of that person that was God, and is God. Faith is the condition
God requires to justification, but not a dead, James ii. 20, but an active
faith; such a faith as * purifies the heart,' Acts xv. 9. He calls for repent-
ance, which is a moral retracting our offences, and an approbation of con-
temned righteousness and a violated law ; an endeavour to regain what is
lost, and to pluck out the heart of that sin we have committed. He requires
mortification, which is called crucifying, whereby a man would strike as full
and deadly a blow at his lusts as was struck at Christ upon the cross, and
make them as certainly die as the Redeemer did.

Our own righteousness must be condemned by us as impure and imper-
fect. We must disown everything that is our own, as to righteousness, in
reverence to the holiness of God and the valuation of the righteousness of
Christ. He hath resolved not to bestow the inheritance of glory without
the root of grace. None are partakers of the divine blessedness that are not
partakers of the divine nature ; there must be a renewing of his image before
there be a vision of his face, Heb. xii. 14. He will not have men brought
only into a relative state of happiness by justification, without a real state
of grace by sanctification. And so resolved he is in it, that there is no
admittance into heaven of a starting, but a persevering, holiness : Rom.
ii. 7, a * patient continuance in well doing ;' patient under the sharpness of
affliction, and continuing under the pleasures of prosperity. Hence it is
that the gospel, the restoring doctrine, hath not only the motives of rewards
to allure us to good, and the danger of punishments to scare us from evil, as
the law had, but they are set forth in a higher strain, in a way of stronger
engagement, the rewards are heavenly, and the punishments eternal ; and
more powerful motives besides, from the choicer expressions of God's love
in the death of his Son. The whole design of it is to re-instate us in a re-
semblance to this divine perfection, whereby he shews what an affection he
hath to this excellency of his nature, and what a detestation he hath of evil,
which is contrary to it.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's noLiNESs. 215

(3.) It appears in the actual regeneration of the redeemed soul, and a
carrying it on to a full perfection. As election is the effect of God's sove-
reignty, our pardon the fruit of his mercy, our knowledge a stream from his
wisdom, our strength an impression of his power, so our purity is a beam
from his holiness. The whole work of sanctification, and the preservation
of it, our Saviour begs for his disciples of his Father under this title : John
xvii. 11, 17, 'Holy Father, keep them through thy own name,' and 'sanc-
tify them through thy truth,' as the proper source whence holiness was to
flow to the creature ; as the sun is the proper fountain whence light is
derived, both to the stars above and bodies here below. Whence he is not
only called holy, but 'the Holy One of Israel;' Isa. xliii. 15, 'I am the
Lord your Holy One, the Creator of Israel,' displaying his hoHness in them
by a new creation of them as his Israel. As the rectitude of the creature at
the first creation was the effect of his holiness, so the purity of the creature
by a new creation is a draught of the same perfection. He is called the
Holy One of Israel more in Isaiah, that evangelical prophet, in erecting
Zion, and forming a people for himself, than in the whole Scriptures besides.
As he sent Jesus Christ to satisfy his justice for the expiation of the guilt
of sin, so he sends the Holy Ghost for the cleansing the filth of sin and over-
mastering the power of it. Himself is the fountain, the Son is the pattern,
and the Holy Ghost the immediate imprinter of this stamp of holiness upon
the creature. God hath such a value for this attribute, that he designs the
glory of this in the renewing of the creature more than the happiness of the
creature ; though the one doth necessarily follow upon the other, yet the one
is the principal design and the other the consequent of the former ; whence
our salvation is more frequently set forth in Scripture by a redemption from
sin, and sanctification of the soul, than by a possession of heaven, Titus ii.
11-14, and many other places.

Indeed, as God could not create a rational creature without interesting
this attribute in a special manner, so he cannot restore the fallen creature
without it. As in creating a rational creature there must be holiness to
adorn it, as well as wisdom to form the design, and power to effect it, so in
the restoration of the creature, as he could not make a reasonable creature
unholy, so he cannot restore a fallen creature, and put him in a meet pos-
ture to take pleasure in him, without communicating to him a resemblance
of himself. As God cannot be blessed in himself without this perfection of
purity, so neither can a creature be blessed without it. As God would be
unlovely to himself without this attribute, so would the creature be unlovely
to God without a stamp and mark of it upon his nature. So much is this
perfection one with God, valued by him, and interested in all his works
and ways.

III. The third thing I am to do, is to lay down some propositions in the
defence of God's holiness in all his acts about or concerning sin. It was a
prudent and pious advice of Camero, not to be too busy and rash in inquiries
and conclusions about the reason of God's providence in the matter of sin.
The Scripture hath put a bar in the way of such curiosity, by telling us,
that the ways of God's wisdom and righteousness in his judgments are un-
searchable, Rom. xi. 33, much more the ways of God's holiness as he stands
in relation to sin as a Governor of the world. We cannot consider those
things without danger of slipping ; our eyes are too weak to look upon the
sun without being dazzled ; too much curiosity met with a just check in our
first parent. To be desirous to know the reason of all God's proceedings
in the matter of sin, is to second the ambition of Adam, to be as wise as

216 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

God, and know the reason of his actings equally with himself. It is more
easy, as the same author saith, to give an account of God's providence since
the revolt of man, and the poison that hath universally seized upon human
nature, than to make guesses at the manner of the fall of the first man. The
Scripture hath given us but a short account of the manner of it, to discourage
too curious inquiries into it.

It is certain that God made man upright ; and when man sinned in para-
dise, God was active in sustaining the substantial nature and act of the sin-
ner while he was sinning, though not in supporting the sinfulness of the act.
He was permissive in suffering it, he was negative in withholding that grace
which might certainly have prevented his crime, and consequently his ruin,
though he withheld nothing that was sufficient for his resistance of that temp-
tation wherewith he was assaulted. And since the fall of man, God, as a
wise governor, is directive of the events of the transgression, and draws the
choicest good out of the blackest evil, and limits the sins of men, that they
creep not so far as the evil nature of men would urge them to ; and as a
righteous judge, he takes away the talent from idle servants, and the light
from wicked ones, whereby they stumble and fall into crimes by the inclina-
tions and proneness of their own corrupt natures, leaves them to the bias of
their own vicious habits, denies that grace which they have forfeited, and
have no right to challenge ; and turns their sinful actions into punishments,
both to the committers of them and others.

Prop. 1. God's holiness is not chargeable with any blemish, for his creat-
ing man in a mutable state. It is true angels and men were created with a
changeable nature ; and though there was a rich and glorious stamp upon
them by the hand of God, yet their natures were not incapable of a base
and vile stamp from some other principle ; as the silver, which bears upon
it the image of a great prince, is capable of being melted down, and imprinted
with no better an image than that of some vile and monstrous beast. Though
God made man upright, yet he was capable of seeking * many inventions,'
Eccles. vii. 29 ; yet the hand of God was not defiled by forming man with
such a nature. It was suitable to the wisdom of God to give the rational
creature, whom he had furnished with a power of acting righteously, the
liberty of choice, and not fix him in an unchangeable state, without a
trial of him in his natural. And if he did obey, his obedience might be
the more valuable ; and if he did freely offend, his offence might be more
inexcusable.

1. No creature can be capable of immutability by nature. Mutability is
so essential to a creature, that a creature cannot be supposed without it.
You must suppose it a creator, not a creature, if you allow it to be an im-
mutable nature. Immutability is the property of the supreme being. God
* only hath immortality,' 1 Tim. vi. 16. Immortality, as opposed not only
to a natural, but to a sinful death ; the word only appropriates every sort
of immortality to God, and excludes every creature, whether angel or man,
from a partnership with God in this by nature. Every creature therefore
is capable of a death in sin. ' None is good but God,' and none is naturally
free from change but God ; which excludes every creature from the same
prerogative ; and certainly if one angel sinned, all might have sinned, be-
cause there was the same root of mutability in one as well as another. It
is as possible for a creature to be creator, as for a creature to have naturally
an incommunicable property of the Creator. All things, whether angels or
men, are made of nothing, and therefore capable of defection ;* because a
creature being made of nothing, cannot be good per essentiam, or essentially
♦ Suarez, vol. ii. p. 648.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 217

good, but by participation from another. Again, every rational creature,
being made of nothing, hath a superior which created him and governs him,
and is capable of a precept ; and consequently capable of disobedience as
well as obedience to the precept, to transgress it as well as obey it. God
cannot sin, because he can have no superior to impose a precept on him.
A rational creature, with a Hberty of will and power of choice, cannot be
made by nature of such a mould and temper, but he must be as well capable
of choosing wrong, as of choosing right ; and therefore the standing angels,
and glorified saints, though they are immutable, it is not by nature they are
so, but by grace, and the good pleasure of God ; for though they are in
heaven, they have still in their nature a remote power of sinning, but it shall
never be brought into act, because God will always incline their wills to love
him, and never concur with their wills to any evil act. Since therefore
mutability is essential to a creature, as a creature, this changeableness can-
not properly be charged upon God as the author of it ; for it was not the
term of God's creating act, but did necessarily result from the nature of the
creature, as unchangeableness doth result from the essence of God. The
brittleness of a glass is no blame to the art of him that blew up the glass
into such a fashion ; that imperfection of brittleness is not from the work-
man, but the matter. So though changeableness be an imperfection, yet it
is so necessary a one, that no creature can be naturally without it. Besides,
though angels and men were mutable by creation, and capable to exercise
their wills, yet they were not necessitated to evil ; and this mutability did
not infer a necessity that they should fall ; because some angels', which had
the same root of changeableness in their natures with those that fell, did not
fall, which they would have done, if capableness of changing, and necessity
of changing, were one and the same thing.

2. Though God made the creature mutable, yet he made him not evil.
There could be nothing of evil in him that God created after his own image,
and pronounced good. Gen. i. 27, Bl. Man had an ability to stand, as well
as a capacity to fall ; he was created with a principle of acting freely, where-
by he was capable of loving God as his chief good, and moving to him as his
last end ; there was a beam of light in man's understanding to know the rule
he was to conform to, a harmony between his reason and his aflections, an
original righteousness. So that it seemed more easy for him to determine
bis will to continue in obedience to the precept, than to swerve from it ; to
adhere to God as his chief good, than to Usten to the charms of Satan.
God created him with those advantages, that he might with more facility
have kept his eyes fixed upon the divine beauty, than turn his back upon it ;
and with greater ease have kept the precept God gave him, than have broken
it. The very first thought darted, or impression made by God upon the
angelical or human nature, was the knowledge of himself as their author, and
could be no other than such whereby both angels and men might be excited
to a love of that adorable being that had framed them so gloriously out of
nothing. And if they turned their wills and aflections to another object, it
was not by the direction of God, but contrary to the impression God had
made upon them, or the first thought he flashed into them. They turned
themselves to the admiring their own excellency, or affecting an advantage
distinct from that which they were to look for only from God. 1 Tim. iii. 6,
pride was the cause of the condemnation of the devil. Though the wills
of angels and men were created mutable, and so were imperfect, yet they
were not created evil. Though they might sin, yet they might not sin, and
therefore were not evil in their own nature. What reflection then could this
mutability of their nature be upon God ? So far is it from any, that he is

218 chaenock's woeks. [Exod. XV. 11.

fully cleared, by storing up in the nature of man sufficient provision against
his departure from him. God was so far from creating him evil, that he
fortified him with a knowledge in his understanding, and a strength in his
nature, to withstand any invasion. The knowledge was exercised by Eve in
the very moment of the serpent's assaulting her : Gen. iii. 3, Eve ' said to
the serpent, God hath said. Ye shall not eat of it.' And had her thoughts
been intent upon this God hath said, and not diverted to the motions of the
sensitive appetite and liquorish palate, it had been sufficient to put by all
the passes the devil did, or could have made at her. So that you see, though
God made the creature mutable, yet he made him not evil. This clears the
holiness of God.

3. Therefore it follows, that though God created man changeable, yet he
was not the cause of his change by his fall. Though man was created de-
fectible, yet he was not determined by God influencing his will by any
positive act to that change and apostasy. God placed him in a free posture,
set life and happiness before him on the one hand, misery and death on the
other. As he did not draw him into the arms of perpetual blessedness, so
he did not drive him into the gulf of his misery ;* he did not iucline him to
evil. It was repugnant to the goodness of God to corrupt the righteousness
of those faculties he had so lately beautified him with. It was not likely he
should deface the beauty of that work he had composed with so much
wisdom and skill. Would he by any act of his own make that bad, which
but a little before he had acquiesced in as good ? Angels and men were left
to their liberty and conduct of their natural faculties ; and if God inspired
them with any motions, they could not but be motions to good, and suited
to that righteous nature he had endued them with. But it is most probable
that God did not in a supernatural way act inwardly upon the mind of man,
but left him wholly to that power which he had in creation furnished him
with. The Scripture frees God fully from any blame in this, and lays it
wholly upon Satan as the tempter, and upon man as the determiner of his
own will. Gen. iii. 6, Eve took of the fruit, and did eat ; and Adam took
from her of the fruit, and did eat. And Solomon, Eccles. vii. 29, dis-
tinguisheth God's work in the creation of man ' upright,' from man's work
in ' seeking out' those ruining ' inventions.' God created man in a right-
eous state, and man cast himself into a forlorn state. As he was a mutable
creature, he was from God ; as he was a changed and corrupted creature,
it was from the devil seducing, and his own pliableness in admitting ; as
silver, and gold, and other metals, were created by God in such a form and
figure, yet capable of receiving other forms by the industrious art of man.
"When the image of a man is put upon a piece of metal, God is not said to
create that image, though he created the substance with such a property,
that it was capable of receiving it. This capacity is from the nature of the
metal by God's creation of it, but the carving the figure of this or that man,
is not the act of God, but the act of man ; as images in Scripture are called
the work of men's hands, in regard of the imagery, though the matter, wood
or stone, upon which the image was carved, was a work of God's creative
power. When an artificer frames an excellent instrument, and a musician
exactly tunes it, and it comes out of their hands without a blemish, but
capable to be untuned by some rude hand, or receive a crack by a sudden
fall if it meet with a disaster, is either the workman or musician to be
blamed ? The ruin of a house, caused by the wastefulness or carelessness of
the tenant, is not to be imputed to the workman that built it strong, and
left it in a good posture.

* Amyral. Moral, torn. i. p, 615, 616.

ExoD, XV. 11.] god's holiness. 219

Prop. 2. God's holiness is not blemished by enjoining man a law, which
he knew he would not observe.

1. The law was not above his strength. Had the law been impossible to
be observed, no crime could have been imputed to the subject, the fault had
lain wholly upon the governor ; the non-observance of it had been from a
want of strength, and not from a want of will. Had God commanded Adam
to fly up to the sun, when he had not given him wings, Adam might have a
will to obey it, but his power would be too short to perform it. But the law
set him for a rule had nothing of impossibility in it ; it was easy to be ob-
served ; the command was rather below than above his strength, and the
sanction of it was more apt to restrain and scare him from the breach of it,
than encourage any daring attempts against it. He had as much power, or
rather more, to conform to it, than to warp from it ; and greater arguments
and interest to be observant of it, than to violate it ; his all was secured by
the one, and his ruin ascertained by the other. The commands of God are
' not grievous,' 1 John v. 3 ; from the first to the last command there is
nothing impossible, nothing hard to the original and created nature of man,
which were all summed up in a love to God, which was the pleasure and
delight of man, as well as his duty, if he had not by inconsiderateness
neglected the dictates and resolves of his own understanding. The law was
suited to the strength of man, and fitted for the improvement and perfection
of his nature ; in which respect the apostle calls it good, as it refers to man;
as well as holy, as it refers to God, Rom. vii. 12. Now since God created
man a creature capable to be governed by a law, and as a rational creature
endued with understanding and will, not to be governed according to his
nature without a law, was it congruous to the wisdom of God to respect
only the future state of man, which, from the depth of his infinite know-
ledge, he did infallibly foresee would be miserable by the wilful defection of
man from the rule ? Had it been agreeable to the wisdom of God to respect
only this future state, and not the present state of the creature, and there-
fore leave him lawless, because he knew he would violate the law? Should
God forbear to act like a wise governor, because he foresaw that man would
cease to act like an obedient subject ? Shall a righteous magistrate forbear
to make just and good laws, because he foresees, either from the disposi-
tions of his subjects, their ill-humour, or some circumstances which will
intervene, that multitudes of them will incline to break those laws, and fall
under the penalty of them ? No blame can be upon that magistrate who
minds the rule of righteousness, and the necessary duty of his govern-
ment, since he is not the cause of those turbulent affections in men, which
he wisely foresees will rise up against his just edicts.

2. Though the law now be above the strength of man, yet is not the holi-
ness of God blemished by keeping it up. It is true, God hath been gra-
ciously pleased to mitigate the severity and rigour of the law by the entrance
of the gospel ; yet, where men refuse the terms of the gospel, they continue
themselves under the condemnation of the law, and are justly guilty of the
breach of it, though they have no strength to observe it. The law, as I said
before, was not above man's strength, when he was possessed of original right-
eousness, though it be above man's strength, since he was stripped of original
righteousness. The command was dated before man had contracted his im-
potency, when he had a power to keep it as well as to break it. Had it
been enjoined to man only after the fall, and not before, he might have had
a better pretence to excuse himself, because of the impossibility of it ; yet he
•would 'not have had sufficient excuse, since the impossibility did not result
from the nature of the law, but from the corrupted nature of the creature.

220 chaenock's woeks, [Exod. XV. 11.

It was ' weak through the flesh,' Eom. viii. 3, but it was promulged when
man had a strength proportioned to the commands of it. And now, since
man hath unhappily made himself uncapable of obeying it, must God's holi-
ness in his law be blemished for enjoining it ? Must he abrogate those
commands, and prohibit what before he enjoined, for the satisfaction of the
corrupted creature ? Would not this be his ceasing to be holy, that his
creature might be unblameably unrighteous ? Must God strip himself of
his holiness, because man will not discharge his iniquity ? He cannot be
the cause of sin, by keeping up the law, who would be the cause of all the
unrighteousness of men, by removing the authority of it. Some things in
the law, that are intrinsecally good in their own nature, are indispensable,
and it is repugnant to the nature of God not to command them. If he were
not the guardian of his indispensable law, he would be the cause and coun-
tenancer of the creature's iniquity ; so little reason have men to charge God
with being the cause of their sin, by not repealing his law to gratify
their impotence, that he would be unholy if he did. God must not lose his
purity, because man hath lost his ; and cast away the right of his sove-
reignty, because man hath cast away his power of obedience.

3. God's foreknowledge that his law would not be observed lays no blame
upon him. Though the foreknowledge of God be infallible, yet it doth not
necessitate the creature in acting. It was certain from eternity, that Adam
would fall, that men would do such and such actions, that Judas would be-
tray our Saviour ; God foreknew all those things from eternity ; but it is as
certain that this foreknowledge did not necessitate the will of Adam, or any
other branch of his posterity, in the doing those actions that were so fore-
seen by God ; they voluntarily run into such courses, not by any impulsion.
God's knowledge was not suspended between certainty and uncertainty. He
certainly foreknew that his law would be broken by Adam ; he foreknew it
in his own decree of not hindering him, by giving Adam the efficacious grace
which would infallibly have prevented it ; yet Adam did freely break this
law, and never imagined that the foreknowledge of God did necessitate him
to it. He could find no cause of his own sin but the liberty of his own will ;
he charges the occasion of his sin upon the woman, and consequently upon
God in giving the woman to him. Gen. iii. 12. He could not be so ignorant
of the nature of God as to imagine him without a foresight of future things,
since his knowledge of what was to be known of God by creation was greater
than any man's since, in all probability. But, however, if he were not
acquainted with the notion of God's foreknowledge, he could not be ignorant
of his own act ; there could not have been any necessity upon him, any kind
of constraint of him in his action that could have been unknown to him ;
and he would not have omitted a plea of so strong a nature, when he was
upon his trial for life or death, especially when he urgeth so weak an argu-
ment to impute his crime to God as the gift of the woman, as if that which
was designed him for a help were intended for his ruin. If God's prescience
takes away the liberty of the creature, there is no such thing as a free action
in the world (for there is nothing done but is foreknown by God, else we
render God of a limited understanding), nor ever was, no, not by God him-
self ad extra ; for whatsoever he hath done in creation, whatsoever he hath
done since the creation, was foreknown by him ; he resolved to do it, and
therefore foreknew that he would do it. Did God do it therefore neces-
sarily, as necessity is opposed to liberty ? As he freely decrees what he
will do, so he effects what he freely decreed. Foreknowledge is so far from
intrenching upon the liberty of the will, that predetermination, which in the
notion of it speaks something more, doth not dissolve it ; God did not only

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 221

foreknow, but determine the suffering of Christ, Acts iv. 27, 28. It was
necessary, therefore, that Christ should suffer, that God might not be mis-
taken in his foreknowledge, or come short of his determinate decree. But
did this take away the liberty of Christ in suffering ? Eph. v. 2, ' Who
offered himself up to God ; ' that is, by a voluntary act, as well as designed
to do it by a determinate counsel. It did infallibly secure the event, but
did not annihilate the liberty of the action, either in Christ's willingness to
suffer, or the crime of the Jews that made him suffer. God's prescience is
God's prevision of things arising from their proper causes ; as a gardener
foresees in his plants the leaves and the flowers that will arise from them
in the spring, because he knows the strength and nature of their several roots
which lie under ground, but his foresight of these things is not the cause of
the rise and appearance of those flowers. If any of us see a ship moving
towards such a rock or quicksand, and know it to be governed by a negli-
gent pilot, we shall certainly foresee that the ship will be torn in pieces by
the rock, or swallowed up by the sands ; but is this foresight of ours
from the causes, any cause of the effect, or can we from hence be said to be
the authors of the miscarriage of the ship, and the loss of the passengers
and goods ? ;The fall of Adam was foreseen by God to come to pass by the
consent of his free will in the choice of the proposed temptation. God fore-
knew Adam would sin, and if Adam would not have sinned, God would
have foreknown that he would not sin. Adam might easily have detected
the serpent's fraud, and made a better election ; God foresaw that he would
not do it ; God's foreknowledge did not make Adam guilty or innocent ;
whether God had foreknown it or no, he was guilty by a free choice, and a
willing neglect of his own duty. Adam knew that God foreknew that he
might eat of the fruit, and fall and die, because God had forbidden him ;
the foreknowledge that he would do it was no more a cause of his action than
the foreknowledge that he might do it. Judas certainly knew that his
master foreknew that he should betray him, for Christ had acquainted him
with it, John xiii. 21, 26, yet he never charged this foreknowledge of Christ
with any guilt of his treachery.

Prop. 3. The holiness of God is not blemished by decreeing the eternal
rejection of some men. Reprobation in its first notion is an act of preteri-
tion, or passing by. A man is not made wicked by the act of God, but it
supposeth him wicked, and so it is nothing else but God's leaving a man in
that guilt and filth wherein he beholds him. In its second notion it is an
ordination, not to a crime, but to a punishment ; Jude 4, an ordaining to
condemnation. And though it be an eternal act of God, yet in order of
nature it follows upon the foresight of the transgression of man, and sup-
poseth the crime. God considers Adam's revolt, and views the whole mass
of his corrupted posterity, and chooses some to reduce to himself by his
grace, and leaves others to lie sinking in their ruins. Since all mankind fell
by the fall of Adam, and have corruption conveyed to them successively by
that root whereof they are branches ; all men might justly be left wallowing
in that miserable condition to which they were reduced by the apostasy of
their common head, and God might have passed by the whole race of man,
as well as he did the fallen angels, without any hope of redemption. He
was no more bound to restore man than to restore devils, nor bound to
repair the nature of any one son of Adam ; and had he dealt with men as
he dealt with the devils, they had had all of them as little just ground to com-
plain of God ; for all men deserved to be left to themselves, for all were
* concluded under sin.' But God calls out some to make monuments of
his grace, which is an act of the sovereign mercy of that dominion whereby

222 chaenock's wobks. [Exod.-XV. 11.

' he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy,' Rom. ix. 18. Others he
passes by, and leaves them remaining in that corruption of nature wherein
they were born. If men have a power to dispose of their own goods, with-
out any unrighteousness, why should not God dispose of his own grace,
and bestow it upon whom he pleases, since it is a debt to none, but a free
gift to any that enjoy it ? God is not the cause of sin in this, because his
operation about this is negative ; it is not an action, but a denial of action,
and therefore cannot be the cause of the evil actions of men.* God acts
nothing, but withholds his power ; he doth not enlighten their minds, nor
incline their wills so powerfully as to expel their darkness, and root out those
evil habits which possess them by nature. God could, if he would, savingly
enlighten the minds of all men in the world, and quicken their hearts with
a new life by an invincible grace, but in not doing it there is no positive act
of God, but a cessation of action. We may with as much reason say, that
God is the cause of all the sinful actions that are committed by the cor-
poration of devils since their first rebellion, because he leaves them to
themselves, and bestows not a new grace upon them ; as say God is the
cause of the sins of those that he overlooks and leaves in that state of guilt
wherein he found them. God did not pass by any without the considera-
tion of sin, so that this act of God is not repugnant to his holiness, but
conformable to his justice.

Prop. 4. The holiness of God is not blemished by his secret will to suffer
sin to enter into the world. God never willed sin by his preceptive will.
It was never founded upon, or produced by any word of his, as the creation
was. He never said. Let there be sin under the heaven, as he said. Let
there be water under the heaven. Nor doth he will it by infusing any habit
of it, or stirring up inchnations to it ; no, ' God tempts no man,' James
i. 13. Nor doth he will it by his approving will ; it is detestable to him,
nor ever can be otherwise. He cannot approve it either before commission,
or after.

1. The will of God is in some sort concurrent with sin. He doth not
properly will it, but he wills not to hinder it, to which by his omnipotence
he could put a bar. If he did positively will it, it might be wrought by
himself, and so could not be evil. If he did in no sort will it, it would not
be committed by his creature. Sin entered into the world, either God
willing the permission of it, or not willing the permission of it. The latter
cannot be said : for then the creature is more powerful than God, and can
do that which God will not permit. God can, if he be pleased, banish all.
sin in a moment out of the world ; he could have prevented the revolt of
angels, and the fall of man, they did not sin whether he would or no ; he
might by his grace have stepped in the first moment, and made a special
impression upon them of the happiness they already possessed, and the
misery they would incur by any wicked attempt. He could as well have
prevented the sin of the fallen angels, and confirmed them in grace, as of
those that continued in their happy state ; he might have appeared to man,
informed him of the issue of his design, and made secret impressions upon
his heart, since he was acquainted with every avenue to his will. God
could have kept all sin out of the world, as well as all creatures from
breathing in it ; he was as well able to bar sin for ever out of the world as
to let creatures lie in the womb of nothing, wherein they were first wrapped.
To say God doth will sin as he doth other things, is to deny his holiness ;
to say it entered without anything of his will, is to deny his omnipotence.
If he did necessitate Adam to fall, what shall we think of his purity? If
* Amyrald, Defens. de Calv., p. 145.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 223

Adam did fall without any concern of God's will in it, what shall we say of
his sovereignty ? The one taints his holiness, and the other clips his
power. If it came without anything of his will in it, and he did not foresee
it, where is his omniscience ? If it entered whether he would or no, where
is his omnipotence? Rom. ix. 19, 'Who hath resisted his will?' There
cannot be a lustful act in Abimelech, if God will withhold his power : Gen.
XX. 6, ' I withheld thee ; ' nor a cursing word in Balaam's mouth, unless
God give power to speak it : Num. xxii. 38, ' Have I now any power at all
to say anything ? The word that God puts in my mouth, that shall I
speak.' As no action could be sinful if God had not forbidden it, so no sin
could be committed if God did not will to give way to it.

2. God doth not will sin directly, and by an efficacious will. He doth
not directly will it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which is a
discovery of his will. So that if he should directly will sin, and directly
prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner, and there
would be contradictions in God's will. To will sin absolutely is to work it:
Ps, cxv. 3, ' God hath done whatsoever he pleased.' God cannot absolutely
will it, because he cannot work it. God wills good by a positive decree,
because he hath decreed to effect it.* He wills evil by a privative decree,
because he hath decreed not to give that grace which would certainly pre-
vent it. God doth not will sin simply, for that were to approve it, but he
wills itt in order to that good his wisdom will bring forth from it. He wills
not sin for itself, but for the event. To will sin as sin, or as purely evil, is
not in the capacity of a creature, neither of man nor devil. The will of a
rational creature cannot will anything but under the appearance of good, of
some good in the sin itself, or some good in the issue of it. Much more is
this from God, who being infinitely good, cannot will evil as evil, and being
infinitely knowing, cannot will that for good which is evil. J Infinite wisdom
can be under no error or mistake. To will sin as sin would be an unanswer-
able blemish on God, but to will to suffer it in order to good is the glory of
his wisdom. It could never have peeped up its head unless there had been
some decree of God concerning it. And there had been no decree of God
concerning it, had he not intended to bring good and glory out of it. If
God did directly will the discovery of his grace and mercy to the world, he
did in some sort will sin, as that without which there could not have been
any appearance of mercy in the world ; for an innocent creature is not the
object of mercy, but a miserable creature, and no rational creature but must
be sinful before it be miserable.

3. God wills the permission of sin. He doth not positively will sin, but
he positively wills to permit it. And though he doth not approve of sin,
yet he approves of that act of his will whereby he permits it. For since
that sin could not enter into the world without some concern of God's will
about it, that act of his will that gave way to it could not be displeasing to
him. God could never be displeased with his own act : ' He is not a man
that he should repent,' 1 Sam. xv. 29. What God cannot repent of, he
cannot but approve of ; it is contrary to the blessedness of God to disap-
prove of, and be displeased with, any act of his own will. If he hated any
act of his own will, he would hate himself, he would be under a torture ;
every one that hates his own acts is under some disturbance and torment
for them. That which is permitted by him is in itself, and in regard of the
evil of it, hateful to him ; but as the prospect of that good which he aims
at in the permission of it is pleasing to him, so that act of his will whereby

* Rispolig. t Bradward., lib. i. cap. xxxiv., God wills it, secundum quid.

X Aquin. Cont. Gent. 1. i. p. 95.

224 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

he permits it is ushered in by an approving act of his understanding.
Either God approved of the permission or not ; if he did not approve his
own act of permission, he could not have decreed an act of permission. It
is unconceivable that God should decree such an act which he detested,
and positively will that which he hated. Though God hated sin, as being
against his holiness, yet he did not hate the permission of sin, as being
subservient by the immensity of his wisdom to his own glory. He could
never be displeased with that which was the result of his eternal counsel, as
this decree of permitting sin was, as well as any other decree resolved upon
in his own breast. For as God acts nothing in time, but what he decreed
from eternity, so he permits nothing in time, but what he decreed from
eternity to permit. To speak properly, therefore, God doth not will sin,
but he wills the permission of it, and this will to permit is active and positive
in God.

4. This act of permission is not a mere and naked permission, but such
an one as is attended with a certainty of the event. The decrees of God to
make use of the sin of man for the glory of his grace, in the mission and
passion of his Son, hung upon this entrance of sin ; would it consist.with
the wisdom of God to decree such great and stupendous things, the event
whereof should depend upon an uncertain foundation, which he might be
mistaken in ? God would have sat in council from eternity to no purpose,
if he had only permitted those things to be done, without any knowledge of
the event of this permission ; God would not have made such provision for
redemption to no purpose, or an uncertain purpose, which would have been
if man had not fallen, or if it had been an uncertainty with God whether he
would fall or no. Though the [will of God about sin was permissive, yet the
will of God about that glory he would promote by the defect of the creature
was positive, and therefore, he would not suffer so many positive acts of
his will to hang upon an uncertain event, and therefore he did wisely and
righteously order all things to the accomplishment of his great and gracious
purposes.

5. This act of permission doth not taint the holiness of God. That there
is such an act as permission is clear in Scripture : Acts xiv. 16, ' Who in
times past suff'ered all nations to walk in their own ways ;' but that it doth not
blemish the holiness of God will appear,

(1.) From the nature of this permission.

[l.J It is not a moral permission, a giving liberty of toleration by any law
to commit sin with impunity, when what one law did forbid another law doth
leave indifferent to be done or not, as a man sees good in himself; as
when there is a law made among men, that no man shall go out of a city or
country without license, to go without license is a crime by the law ; but
when that law is repealed by another, that gives liberty for men to go and
come at their pleasure, it doth not make their going or coming necessary,
but leaves those which were before bound, to do as they see good in them-
selves. Such a permission makes a fact lawful, though not necessary ; a
man is not obliged to do it, but he is left to his own discretion to do as he
pleases, without being chargeable with a crime for doing it. Such a per-
mission there was granted by God to Adam of eating of the fruits of the
garden, to choose any of them for food, except the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. It was a precept to him not to eat of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, but the other was a permission, whereby it was
lawful for him to feed upon any other that was most agreeable to his appetite.
But there is not such a permission in the case of sin ; this had been an
indulgence of it which had freed man from any crime, and consequently from

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holixess. 225

punishment, because by such a permission by law he would have had autho-
rity to sin if he pleased. God did not remove the law which he had before
placed as a bar against evil, nor ceased that moral impediment of his threaten-
ing ; such a permission as this, to make sin lawful or indifferent, had been
a blot upon God's holiness.

[2.] But this permission of God in the case of sin, is no more than the
not hindering a sinful action which he could have prevented. It is not so
much an action of God, as a suspension of his influence, which might have
hindered an evil act, and a forbearing to restrain the faculties of man from
sin ; it is properly the not exerting that efiicacy which might change the
counsels that are taken, and prevent the action intended ; as when one man
sees another ready to fall, and can preserve him from falling by reaching out
his hand, he permits him to fall, that is, he hinders him not from falling :
so God describes his act about Abimelech, Gen. xs. 6, ' I withheld thee from
sinning against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.' If Abimelech
had sinned, he had sinned by God's permission, that is, by God's not hinder-
ing or not restraining him, by making any impressions upon him ; so that
permission is only a withholding that help and grace, which, if bestowed, would
have been an effectual remedy to prevent a crime ; and it is rather a suspen-
sion or cessation, than properly a permission ; and sin may be said to be
committed )iot nithout God's permission, rather than by his permission.

Thus in the fall of man, God did not hold the reins strict upon Satan to
restrain him from laying the bait, nor restrain Adam from swallowing the bait ;
he kept to himself that efficacious grace which he might have darted out
upon man to prevent his fall. God left Satan to his malice of tempting, and
Adam to his liberty of resisting and his own strength, to use that sufficient
grace he had furnished him with, whereby he might have resisted and overcome
the temptation. As he did not drive man to it, so he did not secretly restrain
him from it. So in the Jews' crucifying our Saviour ; God did not im-
print upon their minds, by his Spirit, a consideration of the greatness of
the crime, and the horror of his justice due to it, and being without those
impediments, they run furiously of their own accord to the commission of
that evil ; as when a man lets a wolf or dog out upon his prey, he takes
off' the chain which held them, and they presently act according to their
natures.* In the fall of angels and men, God's act was a leaving them to
their own strength. In sins after the fall, it is God's giving them up to
their own corruption. The first is a pure suspension of grace, the other
hath the nature of a punishment : Ps. Ixxxi. 1, ' So I gave them up to their
own hearts' lust.' The first object of this permissive will of God was to
leave angels and men to their own liberty and the use of their free will, which
was natural to them,t not adding that supernatural grace which was neces-
sary, not that they should not at all sin, but that they should infalliblv not sin ;
they had a strength sufficient to avoid sin, but not sufficient infallibly to avoid
sin, a grace sufficient to preserve them, but not sufficient to confirm them.

[3.] Now this permission is not the cause of sin, nor doth blemish the
holiness of God ; it doth not intrench upon the freedom of men, but sup-
porteth it, establisheth it, and leaves man to it. God acted nothing, but
only ceased to act, and therefore could not be the efficient cause of man's
sin. As God is not the author of good but by willing and effecting it, so he
is not the author of evil but by willing and eflecting it. But he doth not
positively will evil, nor effect it by any efficacy of his own. Permission is
no action, nor the cause of that action which is permitted, but the will of
that person who is permitted to do such an action is the cause. ^ God can

* LawKon, p. 64. t Suarez, vol. iv. p. 414. % Suarez, de Legib. p. 43.

VOL. II. P

226 chaknock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

no more be said to be the cause of sin, by suffering a creature to act as it will,
than he can be said to be the cause of the not being of any creature by
denying it being, and letting it remain nothing ; it is not from God that it is
nothing, it is nothing in itself. Though God be said to be the cause of
creation, yet he is never by any said to be the cause of that nothing which
was before creation. This permission of God is not the cause of sin, but
the cause of not hindering sin. Man and angels had a physical power of
sinning from God, as they were created with free will and supported in
their natural strength, but the moral power to sin was not from God ; he coun-
selled them not to it, laid no obligation upon them to use their natural
power for such an end ; he only left them to their freedom, and not hindered
them in their acting what he was resolved to permit.

(2.) The hohness of God is not tainted by this, because he was under no
obligation to hinder their commission of sin. Ceasing to act, whereby to
prevent a crime for mischief, brings not a person permitting it under guilt,
unless where he is under an obligation to prevent it ; but God, in regard of
his absolute dominion, cannot be charged with any such obligation. One man
that doth not hinder the murder of another when it is in his power, is guilty of
the murder in part ; but it is to be considered that he is under a tie by
nature, as being of the same kind, and being the other's brother by a com-
munion of blood, also under an obligation of the law of charity, enacted by
the common sovereign of the world ; but what tie was there upon God, since
the infinite transcendency of his nature and his sovereign dominion frees
him from any such obligation ? Job. ix. 12, ' If he takes away, who shall
say. What dost thou ?' God might have prevented the fall of men and
angels, he might have confirmed them all in a state of perpetual innocency,
but where is the obligation ? He had made the creature a debtor to him-
self, but he owed nothing to the creature. Before God can be charged with any
guilt in this case, it must be proved, not only that he could, but that he was
bound to hinder it. No person can be justly charged with another's fault
merely for not preventing it, unless he be bound to prevent it ; else not only the
first sin of angels and man would be imputed to God as the author, but
all the sins of men. He could not be obliged by any law, because he had
no superior to impose any law upon him, and it will be hard to prove that
he was obliged from his own nature to prevent the entrance of sin, which
he would use as an occasion to declare his own holiness, so transcendent a
perfection of his nature, more than ever it could have been manifested by a
total exclusion of it, viz., in the death of Christ. He is no more bound in
his own nature to preserve, by supernatural grace, his creatures from falling
after he had framed them with sufficient strength to stand, than he was
obliged in his own nature to bring his creature into being, when it was no-
thing. He is not bound to create a rational creature, much less bound to
create him with supernatural gifts ; though, since God would make a
rational creature, he could not but make him with a naturalj uprightness
and rectitude.

God did as much for angels and men as became a wise governor. He
had published his law, backed it with severe penalties, and the creature
wanted not a natural strength to observe and obey it. Had not man a
power to obey all the precepts of the law as well as one ? How was God
bound to give him more grace, since what he had already was enough to
shield him, and keep up his resistance against all the power of hell ! It
had been enough to have pointed his will against the temptation, and he
had kept off the force of it. Was there any promise passed to Adam
of any further grace, which he could plead as a tie upon God ? No

ExoD. XV. 11,] god's holiness. 227

such voluntary limit upon God's supreme dominion appears upon record.
"Was anything due to man which he had not ? anything promised him
which was not performed ? What action of debt, then, can the creature
bring against God ? Indeed, when man began to neglect the light of his
own reason, and became inconsiderate of the precept, God might have en-
lightened his understanding by a special flash, a supernatural beam, and
imprinted upon him a particular consideration of the necessity of his obedi-
ence, the misery he was approaching to by his sin, the folly of any such
apprehension of an equality in knowledge ; he might have convinced him of
the falsity of the serpent's arguments, and uncased to him the venom that
lay under those baits. But how doth it appear that God was bound to those
additional acts, when he had already lighted up in him a spirit which was
• the candle of the Lord,' Prov. xx. 27, whereby he was able to discern
all, if he had attended to it. It was enough that God did not necessi-
tate man to sin, did not counsel him to it, that he had given him suffi-
cient warning in the threatening, and sufficient strength in his faculties, to
fortify him against temptation. He gave him what was due to him as
a creature of his own framing, he witladrew no help from him that was
due to him as a creature, and what was not due he was not bound to im-
part. Man did not beg preserving grace of God, and God was not bound
to offer it when he was not petitioned for it especially ; yet if he had begged
it, God having before furnished him sufficiently, might, by the right of his
sovereign dominion, have denied it without any impeachment of his holiness
and righteousness. Though he would not in such a case have dealt so
bountifully with his creature as he might have done, yet he could not have
been impleaded as dealing unrighteously with his creature. The single word
that God had already uttered when he gave him his precept, was enough to
oppose against all the devil's wiles, which tended to invalidate that word.
The understanding of man could not imagine that the word of God was
vainly spoken ; and the very suggestion of the devil, as if the Creator should
envy his creature, would have appeared ridiculous if he had attended to the
voice of his own reason. God had done enough for him, and was obliged
to do no more, and dealt not unrighteously in leaving him to act according
to the principles of his nature.

To conclude ; If God's permission of sin were enough to charge it upon
God, or if God had been obliged to give Adam supernatural grace, Adam,
that had so capacious a brain, could not be without that plea in his mouth.
Lord, thou mightest have prevented it ; the commission of it by me could
not have been without thy permission of it ; or, Thou hast been wanting to
me, as the author of my nature. No such plea is brought by Adam into the
court, when God tried and cast him ; no such pleas can have any strength in
them. Adam had reason enough to know that there was sufficient reason
to overrule such a plea.

Since the permission of sin casts no dirt upon the holiness of God, as I
think hath been cleared, we may under this head consider two things more.

1. That God's permission of sin is not so much as his restraint or limita-
tion of it. Since the entrance of the first sin into the world by Adam, God
is more a hinderer than a permitter of it. If he hath permitted that which
he could have prevented, he prevents a world more, that he might, if he
pleased, permit. The hedges about sin are larger than the outlets ; they
are but a few streams that glide about the world, in comparison of that mighty
torrent he dams up both in men and devils. He that understands what a
lake of Sodom is in every man's nature, since the universal infection of
human nature, as the apostle describes it, Horn. iii. 9, 10, &c., must acknow-

228 chaknock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

ledge, that if God should cast the reins upon the necks of sinful men, they
would run into thousands of abominable crimes more than they do. The
impression of all natural laws would be razed out, the world would be a
public stew, and a more bloody slaughter-house ; human society would sink
into a chaos ; no star-light of commendable morality would be seen in it ;
the world would be no longer an earth, but a hell, and have lain deeper in
wickedness than it doth. If God did not limit sin, as he doth the sea, and
put bars to the waves of the heart, as well as those of the waters, and say
of them, ' Hitherto you shall go, and no further,' man hath such a furious
ocean in him, as would overflow the banks ; and where it makes a breach in
one place, it would in a thousand, if God should suffer it to act according to
its impetuous current.

As the devil hath lust enough to destroy all mankind, if God did not bridle
him ; deal with every man as he did with Job, ruin their comforts, and
deform their bodies with scabs ; infect religion with a thousand more errors ;
fling disorders into commonwealths, and make them as a fiery furnace, full
of nothing but flame : if he were not chained by that powerful arm, that
might let him loose to fulfil his malicious fury, what rapines, murders, thefts,
would be committed, if he did not stint him ! Abimelech would not only lust
after Sarah, but deflower her ; Laban not only pursue Jacob, but rifle him ;
Saul not only hate David, but murder him ; David not only threaten Nabal,
but root him up, and his family, did not God girdle in the wrath of man,
Ps. Ixxvi. 10 (as the word restrain signifies). A greater remainder of wrath
is pent in, than flames out, which yet swells for an outlet. God may be con-
cluded more holy in preventing men's sins, than the author of sin in permit-
ting some ; since, were it not for his restraints, by the pull-back of conscience,
and infused motions and outward impediments, the world would swarm more
with this cursed brood.

2. His permission of sin is in order to his own glory and a greater good.
It is no reflection upon the divine goodness to leave man to his own conduct,
whereby such a deformity as sin sets foot in the world ; since he makes his
wisdom illustrious in bringing good out of evil, and a good greater than that
evil he suffered to spring up.* God did not permit sin, as sin, or permit it
barely for itself. As sin is not lovely in its own nature, so neither is the
permission of sin intrinsecally good or amiable for itself, but for those ends
aimed at in the permission of it. God permitted sin, but approved not of
the object of that permission, sin; because that, considered in its own nature,
is solely evil : nor can we think that God could approve of the act of per-
mission, considered only in itself as an act, but as it respected that event
which his wisdom would order by it. We cannot suppose that God should
permit sin, but for some great and glorious end ; for it is the manifestation
of his own glorious perfections he intends in all the acts of his will : Pz'ov.
xvi. 4, ' The Lord hath made all things for himself;' 7^9 hath ivrouf/ht all
things, which is not only his act of creation, but ordination ; for himself,
that is, for the discovery of the excellency of his natm-e, and the communi-
cation of himself to his creature. Sin, indeed, in its own nature, hath no
tendency to a good end ; the womb of it teems with nothing but monsters ;
it is a spurn at God's sovereignty, and a slight of his goodness. It both
deforms and torments the person that acts it ; it is black and abominable,
and hath not a mite of goodness in the nature of it. If it ends in any good,
it is only from that infinite transcendency of skill that can bring good out of
evil, as well as light out of darkness.

; Therefore God did not permit it as sin, but as it was an occasion for the
* Maj'us bonum, saith Bradward.

ExoD, XV. 11.] god's holiness. 229

manifestation of his own glory. Though the goodness of God would have
appeared in the preservation of the world, as well as it did in the creation of
it, yet his mercy could not have appeared without the entrance of sin, because
the object of mercy is a miserable creature ; but man could not be miserable
as long as he remained innocent. The reign of sin opened a door for the
reign and triumph of grace : Rom. v. 21, ' As sin hath reigned unto death,
so might grace reign through righteousness to eternal life.' Without it, the
bowels of mercy had never sounded, and the ravishing music of divine grace
could never have been heard by the creature. Mercy, which renders God so
amiable, could never else have beamed out to the world. Angels and men
upon this occasion beheld the stirrings of divine gi-ace, and the tenderness
of divine nature, and the glory of the divine persons in their several functions
about the redemption of man, which had else been a spring shut up and a
fountain sealed ; the song of Glory to God, and good uill to men, in a way
of redemption, had never been sung by them. It appears in his dealings
with Adam, that he permitted his fall, not only to shew his justice in punish-
ing, but principally his mercy in rescuing ; since he proclaims to him first
the promise of a Redeemer to bruise the serpent's head, before he settled the
punishment he should smart under in the world, Gen. iii. 15-17. And what
fairer prospect could the creature have of the holiness of God, and his hatred
of sin, than in the edge of that sword of justice which punished it in the
sinner, but glittered more in the punishment of a surety so near allied to
him ? Had not man been criminal, he could not have been punishable, nor
any been punishable for him ; and the pulse of divine holiness coald not have
beaten so quick, and been so visible, without an exercise of his vindicative
justice. He left man's mutable nature to fall under unrighteousness, that
thereby he might commend the righteousness of his own nature, Rom. iii. 7.
Adam's sin in its nature tended to the ruin of the world, and God takes an
occasion from it for the glory of his gi-ace in the redemption of the world.
He brings forth thereby a new scene of wonders from heaven, and a surprising
knowledge on earth : as the sun breaks out more strongly after a night of
darkness and tempest. As God in creation framed a chaos by his power, to
manifest his wisdom in bringing order out of disorder, light out of darkness,
beauty out of confusion and deformity, when he was able by a word to have
made all creatures to stand up in their beauty, without the precedency of a
chaos : so God permitted a moral chaos, to manifest a greater wisdom in the
repairing a broken image, and restoring a deplorable creature, and bringing
out those perfections of his nature, which had else been wrapt up in a per-
petual silence in his bosom.* It was therefore very congruous to the holi-
ness of God, to permit that which he could make subservient for his own
glory, and particularly for the manifestation of this attribute of holiness, which
seems to be in opposition to such a permission.

Prop. 5. The holiness of God is not blemished by his concurrence with
the creature in the material part of a sinful act. Some, to free God from
having any hand in sin, deny his concurrence to the actions of the creature ;
because, if he concurs to a sinful action, he concurs to the sin also : not
understanding how there can be a distinction between the act and the sinful-
ness or viciousuess of it, and how God can concur to a natural action, with-
out being stained by that moral evil which cleaves to it.

For the understanding of this, observe,

1. There is a concurrence of God to all the acts of the creature : Acts
xvii. 28, ' In him we live, and move, and have our being,' We depend upon

* But of the wisdom of God in the permitting sin in order to redemption, I have
handled in the attribute of Wisdom.

230 charnock's works. lExod. XV. 11.

God in our acting as well as in our being. There is as much an efficacy of
God in our motion, as in our production ; as none have life without his power
in producing it, so none have any operation without his providence concur-
ring with it. In him, or by him, that is, by his virtue preserving and govern-
ing our motions, as well by his power bringing us into being. Hence man
is compared to an axe, Isa. x. 15, an instrument that hath no action, with-
out the co-operation of a superior agent handling it : and the actions of the
second causes are ascribed to God ; the grass, that is the product of the sun,
rain, and earth, he is said to make to grow upon the mountains, Ps. cxlvii. 8,
and the skin and flesh, which is by natural generation, he is said to clothe
us with, Job. X. 5, in regard of his co-working with second causes, according
to their natures. As nothing can exist, so nothing can operate without him ;
let his concurrence be removed, and the being and action of the creature
cease ; remove the sun from the horizon, or a candle from a room, and the
light which floweth from either of them ceaseth. Without God's preserving
and concurring power, the course of nature would sink, and the creation be
in vain. All created things depend upon God as agents, as well as beings,
and are subordinate to him in a way of action, as well as in a way of existing. f
If God suspend his influence from their action, they would cease to act (as
the fire did from burning the three children), as well as if God suspend his
influence from their being, they would cease to be. God supports the nature
whereby actions are wrought, the mind where actions are consulted, and the
will where actions are determined, and the motive power whereby actions are
produced. The mind could not contrive, nor the hand act a wickedness, if
God did not support the power of the one in designing, and the strength of
the other in executing a wicked intention. Every faculty in its being, and
every faculty in its motion, hath a dependence upon the influence of God.
To make the creature independent upon God in anything which speaks per-
fection, as action considered as action is, is to make a creature a sovereign
being. Indeed, we cannot imagine the concurrence of God to the good
actions of men since the fall, without granting a concurrence of God to evil
actions ; because thei'e is no action so purely good, but hath a mixture of
evil in it, though it takes its denomination of good from the better part :
Eccles. vii. 20, * There is no man that doeth good and sins not.'

2. Though the natural virtue of doing a sinful action be from God, and
supported by him, yet this doth not blemish the holiness of God; while God
concurs with them in the act, he instils no evil into men.

(1.) No act in regard of the substance of it is evil. Most of the actions
of our faculties, as they are actions, might have been in the state of inno-
cency. Eating is an act Adam would have used if he had stood firm, but
not eating to excess. Worship was an act that should have been performed
to God in innocence, but not hypocritically. Every action is good by a
physical goodness, as it is an act of the mind or hand, which have a natural
goodness by creation, but every action is not morally good. The physical
goodness of the action depends on God, the moral evil on the creature. f
There is no action, as a corporeal action, is prohibited by the law of God,
but as it springs from an evil disposition, and is tainted by a venomous
temper of mind. There is no action so bad, as attended with such objects
and circumstances, but if the objects and circumstances were changed might
be a brave and commendable action. So that the moral goodness or bad-
ness of an act is not to be esteemed from the substance of the act, which
hath always a physical goodness, but from the objects, circumstances, and
constitution of the mind in the doing of it. Worship is an act good in itself,
* Suarez, Metaph., part i. p. 552. f Amyrald. de Libero arbit., p. 98, 99.

ExoD. XV, 11. J god's holiness. 231

but the worship of an image is bad in regard of the object. Were that act
of worship directed to God that is paid to a statue, and offered up to him
with a sincere frame of mind, it would be morally good. The act m regard
of the substance is the same in both, and considered as separated from the
object to which the worship is directed, hath the same real goodness in
regard of its substance ; but when you consider this action in relation to the
different objects, the one hath a moral goodness, and the other a moral
evil. So in speaking. Speaking being a motion of the tongue in the form-
ing of words, is an excellency belonging to a reasonable creature, an endow-
ment bestowed, continued, and supported by God. Now if the same tongue
forms words whereby it curseth God this minute, and forms words whereby
it blesses and praises God the next minute, the faculty of speaking is the
same, the motion of the tongue is the same in pronouncing the name of God
either in a way of cursing or blessing : James iii. 9, 10, it is the ' same
mouth that blesseth and curseth ; ' and the motion of it is naturally good in
regard of the substance of the act in both ; it is the use of an excellent
power God hath given, and which God preserves in the use of it. But the
estimation of the moral goodness or evil is not from the act itself, but from
the disposition of the mind. Once more, killing as an act is good, nor is it
unlawful as an act ; for if so, God would never have commanded his people
Israel to wage any war, and justice could not be done upon malefactors by
the magistrate. A man were bound to sacrifice his life to the fury of an
invader, rather than secure it by despatching that of an enemy. But killing
an innocent, or killing without authority, or out of revenge, is bad. It is
not the material part of the act, but the object, manner, and circumstance,
that makes it good or evil. It is no blemish to God's holiness to concur to
the substance of an action, without having any hand in the immorality of it,
because whatsoever is real in the substance of the action might be done
without evil. It is not evil as it is an act, as it is a motion of the tongue or
band, for then every motion of the tongue or hand would be evil.

(2.) Hence it follows that an act as an act is one thing, and the vicious-
ness another. The action is the efiicacy of the faculty,* extending itself to
some outward object ; but the sinfulness of an act consists in a privation of
that comeliness and righteousness which ought to be in an action, in a want
of conformity of the act with the law of God, either written in nature or
revealed in the word. Now the sinfulness of an action is not the act itself,
but is considered in it as it is related to the law, and is a deviation from it ;
and so it is something cleaving to the action, and therefore to be distin-
guished from the act itself, which is the subject of the sinfulness. When
we say, such an action is sinful, the action is the subject, and the sinfulness
of the action is that which adheres to it. The action is not the sinfulness,
nor the sinfulness the action ; they are distinguished, as the member and a
disease in the member, the arm and the palsy in it. The arm is not the
palsy, nor is the palsy the arm ; but the palsy is a disease that cleaves to
the arm. S'o sinfulness is a deformity that cleaves to an action.

The evil of an action is not the effect of an action, nor attends it as it is
an action, but as it is an action so circumstantiated and conversant about
this or that object ; for the same action done by two several persons may be
good in one and bad in the other. As when two judges are in joint com-
mission for the trial of a malefactor, both upon the appearance of his guilt
condemn him. This action in both, considered as an action, is good; for
it is an adjudging a man to death whose crime deserves such a punishment.
But this same act, which is but one joint act of both, may be morally good
* Amyrald., p. 321, 322.

282 ciiaenock's works. [Exod. XY. 11-

in one judge and morally evil in the other : morally good in him that con-
demns him out of an unbiassed consideration of the demerit of his fact,
obedience to the law, and conscience of the duty of his place ; and morally
evil in the other, who hath no respect to those considerations, but joins in
the act of condemnation, principally moved by some private animosity
against the prisoner, and desire of revenge for some injury he hath really
received, or imagines that he hath received from him. The act in itself is
the same materially in both ; but in one it is an act of justice, and in the
other an act of murder, as it respects the principles and motives of it in the
two judges; take away the respect of private revenge, and the action in the
ill judge had been as laudable as the action of the other. The substance of
an act, and the sinfulness of an act, are separable and distinguishable ; and
God may concur with the substance of an act without concurring with the sin-
fulness of the act. As the good judge, that condemned the prisoner out of
conscience, concurred with the evil judge who condemned the prisoner out
of private revenge, not in the principle and motive of condemnation, but
in the material part of condemnation, so God assists in that action ot a
man wherein sin is placed, but not in that which is the formal reason
of sin, which is a privation of some perfection the action ought morally to
have.

(3.) It will appear further in this, that hence it follows that the action
and the viciousness of the action may have two distinct causes. That may
be a cause of the one that is not the cause of the other, and hath no hand
in the producing of it. God concurs to the act of the mind as it counsels,
and to the external action upon that counsel, as he preserves the faculty,
and gives strength to the mind to consult, and the other parts to execute ;
yet he is not in the least tainted with the viciousness of the action. Though
the action be from God as a concurrent cause, yet the ill quality of the
action is solely from the creature with whom God concurs. The sun and the
earth concur to the production of all the plants that are formed in the womb
of the one and midwived by the other. The sun distributes heat, and the
earth communicates sap ; it is the same heat dispersed by the one, and the same
juice bestowed by the other. It hath not a sweet juice for one and a sour
juice for another. This general influx of the sun and earth is not the imme-
diate cause that one plant is poisonous and another wholesome, but the sap
of the earth is turned by the nature and quality of each plant. If there
were not such an influx of the sun and earth, no plant could exert that
poison which is in its nature ; but yet the sun and earth are not the cause
of that poison which is in the nature of the plant. If God did not concur
to the motions of men, there could be no sinful action, because there could
be no action at all ; yet this concurrence is not the cause of that venom that
is in the action, which ariseth from the corrupt nature of the creature, no
more than the sun and earth are the cause of the poison of the plant, which
is purely the effect of its own nature upon that general influx of the sun and
earth. The influence of God pierceth through all subjects, but the action of
man done by that influence is vitiated according to the nature of its own
corruption. As the sun equally shines through all the quartels in the win-
dow ; if the glass be bright and clear, there is a pure splendour ; if it be red
or green, the splendour is from the sun, but the discolouring of that light
upon the wall is from the quality of the glass.* But to be yet plainer, the
soul is the image of God, and by the acts of the soul we may come to the
knowledge of the acts of God ; the soul gives motion to the body and every
member of it, and no member could move without a concurrent virtue of the
* Zanch., torn. ii. lib. iii. cap. iv. qu. 4, p. 226.

ExoD. XY. 11.] god's holiness. 233

soul. If a member be paralytic or gouty, whatsoever motion that gouty
member hath is derived to it from the soul ; but the goutiness of the mem-
ber was not the act of the soul, but the fruit of ill humours in the body ; the
lameness of the member and the motion of the member have two distinct
causes ; the motion is from one cause, and the ill motion from another. As
the member could not move irregularly without some ill humour or cause of
that distemper, so it could not move at all without the activity of the soul.
So though God concur to the act of understanding, willing, and execution,
why can he not be as free from the irregularity in all those as the soul is
free from the irregularity of the motion of the body, while it is the cause of
the motion itself ? There are two illustrations generally used in this case
that are not unfit : the motion of the pen in writing is from the hand that
holds it, but the blurs by the pen are from some fault in the pen itself; and
the music of the instrument is from the hand that touches it, but the jar-
ring from the faultiness of the strings ; both are the causes of the motion of
the pen and strings, but not the blurs or jarrings.

(4.) It is very congruous to the wisdom of God, to move his creatures
according to their particular natures ; but this motion makes him not the
cause of sin. Had our innocent nature continued, God had moved us
according to that innocent nature ; but when the state was changed for a
corrupt one, God must either forbear all concourse, and so annihilate the
world, or move us according to that nature he finds in us. If he had over-
thrown the world upon the entrance of sin, and created another upon the
same terms, sin might have as soon defaced his second work, as it did the
first ; and then it would follow, that God would have been alway building
and demolishing. It was not fit for God to cease fr-om acting as a wise
governor of his creature, because man did cease from his loyalty as a subject.
Is it not more agreeable to God's wisdom as a governor, to concur with his
creature according to his nature, than to deny his concurrence upon every
evil determination of the creature ! God concurred with Adam's mutable
nature in his first act of sin ; he concurred to the act, and left him to his
mutability. If Adam had put out his hand to eat of any other unforbidden
fruit, God would have supported his natural faculty then, and concurred
with him in his motion.

When Adam would put out his hand to take the forbidden fruit, God con-
curred to that, natural action, but left him to the choice of the object, and
to the use of his mutable nature ; and when man became apostate, God
concurs with him according to that condition wherein he found him, and
cannot move him otherwise, unless he should alter that nature man had
contracted. God moving the creature as he found him, is no cause of the
ill motion of the creature ; as when a wheel is broken the space of a foot,
it cannot but move ill in that part till it be mended. He that moves it, uses
the same motion (as it is his act) which he would have done had the wheel
been sound ; the motion is good in the mover, but bad in the subject. It
is not the fault of him that moves it, but the fault of that wheel that is
moved, whoso breaches came by some other cause. A man doth not use to
lay aside his watch for some irregularity, as long as it is capable of motion,
but winds it up. Why should God cease from concurring with his creature
in its vital operations and other actions of his will, because there was a flaw
contracted in that nature, that came right and true out of his hand ? And
as he that winds up his disordered watch, is in the same manner the cause
of its motion then, as he was when it was regular, yet by that act of his,
he is not the cause of the false motion of it, but that is from the deficiency
of some part of the watch itself. So though God concurs to that action of

234 charnock's works. [Exod. XY. 11.

the creature, whereby the wickedness of the heart is drawn out ; yet is not
God therefore as unholy as the heart.

(5.) God hath one end in his concurrence, and man another in his action.
So that there is a righteous, and often a gracious end in God, when there is
a base and unworthy end in man. God concurs to the substance of the
act ; man produceth the circumstance of the act, whereby it is evil. God
orders both the action wherein he concurs, and the sinfulness over which he
presides, as a governor, to his own ends. In Joseph's case, man was sinful,
and God merciful ; his brethren acted envy, and God designed mercy. Gen.
xlv. 4, 5. They would be rid of him as an eyesore, and God concurred with
their action to make him their preserver : Gen. 1. 20, * Ye thought evil
against me, but God meant it unto good,' God concurred to Judas his
action of betraying our Saviour ; he supported his nature while he con-
tracted with the priests, and supported his members while he was their
guide to apprehend him ; God's end was the manifestation of his choicest
love to man, and Judas his end was the gratification of his own covetousness.
The Assyrian did a divine work against Jerusalem, bait not with a divine
end, Isa. x. 5-7. He had a mind to enlarge his empire, enrich his coffers
with the spoil, and gain the title of a conqueror ; he is desirous to invade
his neighbours, and God employs him to punish his rebels ; but ' he means
not so, nor doth his heart think so.' He intended not as God intended.
The axe doth not think what the carpenter intends to do with it. But God
used the rapine of an ambitious nature as an instrument of his justice. As
the exposing malefactors to wild beasts was an ancient punishment, whereby
the magistrate intended the execution of justice, and to that purpose used
the natural fierceness of the beasts to an end different from what those
ravaging creatures aimed at, God concurred with Satan in spoiling Job of
his goods, and scarifying his body ; God gave Satan license to do it, and
Job acknowleges it to be God's act. Job. i. 12, 21. But their ends were
different ; God concurred with Satan for the clearing the integrity of his ser-
vant, when Satan aimed at nothing but the provoking him to curse his
Creator. The physician applies leeches to suck the superfluous blood, but
the leeches suck to glut themselves, without any regard to the intention of
the physician, and the welfare of the patient. In the same act where men
intend to hurt, God intends to correct ; so that his concurrence is in a holy
manner, while men commit unrighteous actions. A judge commands the
executioner to execute the sentence of death which he hath justly pronounced
against a malefactor, and admonisheth him to do it out of love to justice ;
the executioner hath the authority of the judge for his commission, and the
protection of the judge for his security. The judge stands by to counte-
nance and secure him in the doing of it ; but if the executioner hath not
the same intention as the judge, viz., a love to justice in the performance
of his office, but a private hatred to the offender, the judge, though he com-
manded the fact of the executioner, yet did not command this error of his in it ;
and though he protects him in the fact, yet he owns not his corrupt disposi-
tion in him in the doing of what was enjoined him, as any act of his own.

To conclude this. Since the creature cannot act without God, cannot lift
up a hand, or move his tongue, without God's preserving and upholding
the faculty and preserving the power of action, and preserving every member
of the body in its actual motion, and in every circumstance of its motion,
we must necessarily suppose God to have such a way of concurrence as
doth not intrench upon his holiness. We must not equal the creature to
God, by denying its dependence on him ; nor must we imagine such a
concurrence to the fulness of an act, as stains the divine purity, which is, I

EXOD. XV. 11.] god's HOLINESS. 235

think, sufficiently salved by distinguishiDg the matter of the act, from the
evil adhering to"^ it. For since all evil is founded in some good ; the evil
is distinguishable from the good, and the deformity of the action from the
action itself, which as it is a created act, hath a dependence on the will and
influence of God ; and as it is a sinful act, is the product of the will of the
creature.

Prop. 6. The holiness of God is not blemished by proposing objects to a
man which he makes use of to sin. There is no object proposed to man,
but is directed by the providence of God, which influenceth all motions in
the world ; and "there is no object proposed to man, but his active nature
may, according to the goodness or badness of his disposition, make a good
or an ill use of. That two men, one of a charitable, the other of a hard-
hearted disposition, meet with an indigent and necessitous object, is from
the providence of God ; yet this indigent person is relieved by the one, and
neglected by the other. There could be no action in the world, but about
some object ; there could be no object offered to us but by divine provi-
dence ; the active nature of man would be in vain, if there were not objects
about which it might be exercised. Nothing could present itself to man as
an object, either to excite his grace, or awaken his corruption, but by the
conduct of the governor of the world. That David should walk upon the
battlements of his palace, and Bathsheba be in the bath at the same time,
was from the divine providence which orders all the affairs of the world,
2 Sam. xi. 2 ; and so some understand Jer. vi. 21, ' Thus saith the Lord,
I will lay stumbling-blocks before his people, and the fathers and sons
together shall fall upon them.' Since they have offered sacrifices without
those due qualifications in their hearts, which were necessary to render them
acceptable to me, I will lay in their way such objects, which their corruption
will use ill, to their further sin and ruin : so Ps. cv. 25, ' He turned their
heart to hate his people ;' that is, by the multiplying his people, he gave
occasion to the Egyptians of hating them, instead of caressing them as they
had formerly done.

But God's holiness is not blemished by this ; for,

1. This proposing or presenting of objects invades not the liberty of any
man. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, set in the midst of the
garden of Eden, had no violent influence on man to force him to eat of it ; his
liberty to eat of it, or not, was reserved entire to himself ; no such charge
can be brought against any object whatsoever. If a man meet accidentally
at a table with meat that is grateful to his palate, but hurtful to the present
temper of his body, doth the presenting this sort of food to him strip him
of his liberty to decline it, as well as to feed of it ? Can the food have any
internal influence upon his will, and lay the freedom of it asleep, whether he
will or no ? Is there any charm in that more than in other sorts of diet ?
No ; but it is the habit of love which he hath to that particular dish, the
curiosity of his fancy, and the strength of his own appetite, whereby he is
brought into a kind of slavery to that particular meat, and not anything in
the food itself. When the word is proposed to two persons, it is embraced
by the one, rejected by the other ; is it from the word itself, which is the
object, that these two persons perform different acts ? The object is the
same to both, but the manner of acting about the object is not the same.
Is there any invasion of their liberty by it ? Is the one forced by the word
to receive it, and the other forced by the word to reject it ? Two such con-
trary effects cannot proceed from one and the same cause ; outward things
have only an objective influence, not an inward. If the mere proposal of
things did suspend or strike down the liberty of man, no angels in heaven,

236 chaenock's works. [Exod. XV, 11.

no man upon earth, no, not our Saviour himself, could do anything freely,
but by force.* Objects that are ill used are of God's creation, and though
they have allurements in them, yet they have no compulsive power over the
will. The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was pleasing
to the sight ; it had a quality to allure, there had not else needed a prohibi-
tion to bar the eating of it ; but it could not have so much power to allure
as the divine threatening to deter.

2. The objects are good in themselves, but the ill use of them is from
man's corruption. Bathsheba was, by God's providence, presented to
David's sight, but it was David's disposition moved him to so evil an act.
What if God knew that he would use that object ill ? yet he knew he had
given him a power to refrain from any ill use of it. The objects are in-
nocent, but our corruption poisons them. The same object hath been used
by one to holy purposes and holy improvements, that hath been used by
another to sinful ends; when a charitable object is presented to a good man
and a cruel man, one relieves him, the other reviles him. The object was
rather an occasion to draw out the charity of one, as well as the other ; but
the refusing to reach out a helping hand was not from the person in calamity,
but the disposition of the refuser to whom he was presented. It is not from
the nature of the object that men do good or evil, but from the disposition
of the person ; what is good in itself is made bad by our corruption. As the
same meat which nourishes and strengthens a sound constitution cherisheth
the disease of another that eats at the same table, not from any unwholesome
quality in the food, but the vicious quality of the humours lodging in the
stomach, which turns the diet into fuel for themselves, which in its own
nature was apt to engender a wholesome juice. Some are perfected by the
same things whereby others are ruined. Riches are used by some, not only
for their own, but the advantage of others in the world ; by others only for
themselves, and scarcely so much as their necessities require. Is this the
fault of the wealth, or the dispositions of the persons who are covetous in-
stead of being generous ? It is a calumny therefore upon God to charge
him with the sin of man upon this account. The rain that drops from the
clouds upon the plants is sweet in itself, but, when it moistens the root of
any venomous plant, it is turned into the juice of the plant, and becomes
venomous with it. The miracles that our Saviour wrought were applauded
by some, and envied by the Pharisees ; the sin arose not from the nature of
the miracles, but the malice of their spirits. The miracles were fitter in
their own nature to have induced them to an adoration of our Saviour, than
to excite so vile a passion against one that had so many marks from heaven
to dignify him, and proclaim him worthy of their respect. The person of
Christ was an object proposed to the Jews ; some worship him, others con-
demn and crucify him, and, according to their several vices and base ends,
they use this object : Judas, to content his covetousness ; the Pharisees, to
glut their revenge; Pilate, for his ambition, to preserve himself in his govern-
ment, and avoid the articles the people might charge him with of counte-
nancing an enemy to Csesar. God at that time put into their minds a
rational and true proposition, which they apply to ill purposes. f Caiaphas
said, that ' it was expedient for one man to die for the people,' which ' he
spake not of himself,' John xi. 50, 51. God put it into his mind, but he
might have applied it better than he did, and considered, though the maxim
was commendable, whether.it might justly be applied to Christ, or whether
there was such a necessity that he must die, or the nation be destroyed by
the Romans. The maxim was sound and holy, decreed by God ; but what
* Amyrald. de libero arbit. p. 224. f Amyrald, Irenic, p. 337.

ExoD. XV. 11. J god's holiness. 237

an ill use did the high priest make of it, to put Christ to death as a seditious
person, to save the nation from the Roman fury !

3. Since the natural corruption of men will use such objects ill, may not
God, without tainting himself, present such objects to them in subserviency
to his gracious decrees ? Whatsoever God should present to men in that
state, they would make an ill use of ; hath not God then the sovereign
prerogative to present what he pleases, and suppress others ? to offer that
to them which may serve his holy purpose, and hide other things from them
which are not so conducing to his gracious ends, which would be as much
the occasions of exciting their sin as the others which he doth bring forth to
their view ? The Jews, at the time of Christ, were of a turbulent and sedi-
tious humour ; they expected a Messiah, a temporal king, and would readily
have embraced any occasion to have been up in arms to have delivered them-
selves from the Roman yoke ; to this purpose the people attempted once to
make him king. And probably the expectation they had, that he had such
a design to head them, might be one reason of their Hosannas, because with-
out some such conceit it was not probable they should so soon change their
note, and vote him to the cross in so short a time, after they had applauded
him as if he had been upon a throne ; but their being defeated of strong
expectations usually ended in a more ardent fury. This turbulent and
seditious humour God directs in another channel, suppresseth all occur-
rences that might excite them to a rebellion against the Romans, which, if
he had given way to, the crucifying Christ, which was God's design to bring
about at that time, had not probably been effected, and the salvation of
mankind been hindered, or stood at a stay for a time. God therefore orders
such objects and occasions that might direct this seditious humour to an-
other channel, which would else have run out in other actions, which had
not been conducing to the great design he had then in the world. Is it not
the right of God, and without any blemish to his holiness, to use those cor-
ruptions which he finds sow^n in the nature of his creature by the hand of
Satan, and to propose such objects as may excite the exercise of them for
bis own service ? Sure God hath as much right to serve himself of the
creature of his own framing, and what natures soever they are possessed
with, and to present objects to that purpose, as a falconer hath to offer this
or that bird to his hawk, to exercise his courage and excite his ravenousness,
without being termed the author of that ravenousness in the creature. God
planted not those corruptions in the Jews, but finds them in those persons
over whom he hath an absolute sovereignty in the right of a Creator, and
that of a judge for their sins, and by the right of that sovereignty may offer
such objects and occasions, which, though innocent in themselves, he "knows
they will make use of to ill purposes, but which by the same decree that he
resolves to present such occasions to them, he also resolves to make use of
them for his own glory. It is not conceivable by us what way that death of
Christ, which was necessary for the satisfaction of divine justice, could be
brought about, without ordering the evil of some men's hearts by special
occasions to effect his purpose ; we cannot suppose that Christ can be guilty
of any crime that deserved death by the Jewish law; had he been so a
criminal, he could not have been a Redeemer.* A perfect innocence was
necessary to the design of his coming. Had God himself put him to that
death, without using instruments of wickedness in it, by some remarkable
hand from heaven, the innocence of his nature had been for ever eclipsed,
and the voluntariness of his sacrifice had been obscured. The strangeness
of such a judgment would have made his innocence incredible; be could not
* This I have spoken of before, but it is necessary now.

288 charnock's works. [Exod. XV, 11.

reasonably have been proposed as an object of faith. What, to believe in
one that was struck dead by a hand from heaven! The propagation of the
doctrine of redemption had wanted a foundation ; and though God might
have raised him again, the certainty of his death had been as questionable
as his innocence in dying had he not been raised. But God orders every-
thing so as to answer his own most wise and holy ends, and maintain his
truth, and the fulfilling the predictions of the minutest concerns about them,
and all this by presenting occasions innocent in themselves, which the cor-
ruptions of the Jews took hold of, and whereby God, unknown to them,
brought about his own decrees. And may not this be conceived without any
taint upon God's holiness; for when there are seeds of all sin in man's
nature, why may not God hinder the sprouting up of this or that kind of
seed, and leave liberty to the growth of the other, and shut up other ways
of sinniuc, and restrain men from them, and let them loose to that tempta-
tion which he intends to serve himself of, hiding from them those objects
which were not so serviceable to his purpose, wherein they would have
sinned, and offer others which he knew their corruption would use ill, and
were serviceable to his ends, since the depravation of their natures would
necessarily hurry them to evil without restraining grace, as a scale will
necessarily rise up, when the weight in it, which kept it down, is taken away?

Prop. 7. The holiness of God is not blemished by withdrawing his grace
from a sinful creature, whereby he falls into more sin. That God withdraws
his grace from men, and gives them up sometimes to the fury of their lusts,
is as clear in Scripture as anything : Deut. xxix. 4, ' Yet the Lord hath not
given you a heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear,' &c. Judas
was delivered to Satan after the sop, and put into his power for despising
former admonitions. He often leaves the reins to the devil, that he may
use what efficacy he can in those that have offended the majesty of God ;
he withholds further influences of grace, or withdraws what before he had
granted them. Thus he withheld that grace from the sons of Eli, that
mi»ht have made their father's pious admonitions effectual to them : 1 Sam.
ii. 25, ' They hearkened not to the voice of their father, because the Lord
would slay them.' He gave grace to Eli to reprove them, and withheld that
grace from them which might have enabled them, against their natural cor-
ruption and obstinacy, to receive that reproof.

But the holiness of God is not blemished by this.

1. Because the act of God in this is only negative.* Thus God is said to
harden men, not by positive hardening, or working anything in the creature,
but by not working, not softening, leaving a man to the hardness of his own
heart, whereby it is unavoidable, by the depravation of man's nature, and the
fury of his passions, but that he should be further hardened, and ' increase
unto more ungodliness,' as the expression is, 2 Tim. ii. 16. As a man is
said to give another his life, when he doth not take it away when it lay at
his mercy, so God is said to harden a man when he doth not mollify him
when it was in his power, and inwardly quicken him with that grace whereby
he might infallibly avoid any further provoking of him. God is said to
harden men, when he removes not from them the incentives to sin, curbs
not those principles which are ready to comply with those incentives, with-
draws the common assistances of his grace, concurs not with counsels and
admonitions to make them effectual, flasheth not in the convincing light
which he darted upon them before. If hardness follows upon God's with-
holding his softening grace, it is not from any positive act of God, but from
the natural hardness of man. If you put fire near to wax or resin, both
* Testard. de natur. et grat., Thes. 150, 151. Amyr. on divers texts, p. 311.

ExoD. XY. 11. J god's holiness. 239

will melt ; but when the fire is removed, they return to their natural quality
of hardness and brittleness. The positive act of the fire is to melt and
soften, and the softness of the rosin is to be ascribed to that, but the hard-
ness is from the resin itself, wherein the fire hath no influence, but only a
negative act by a removal of it ; so when God hardens a man, he only leaves
him to that stony heart which he derived from Adam, and brought with
him into the world. All men's understandings being Winded, and their
wills perverted in Adam, God's withdrawing his grace is but a leaving them
to their natural pravity, which is the cause of their further sinning, and not
God's removal of that special light he before afi'orded them, or restraint he
held over them. As when God withdraws his preserving power from the
creature, he is not the efficient, but deficient, cause of the creature's destruc-
tion ; so in this case, God only ceaseth to bind and dam up that sin which
else would break out.

2. The whole positive cause of this hardness is from man's corruption.
God infuseth not any sin into his creatures, but forbears to infuse his grace
and restrain their lusts, which upon the removal of his grace work impe-
tuously. God only gives them up to that which he knows will work strongly
in their hearts. And therefore the apostle wipes off from God any positive
act in that uncleanness the heathens were given up to (Rom. i. 24,
' Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their
own hearts ;' and verse 26, God gave them up to ' vile afiectious,' but they
were their own affections, none of God's inspiring), but adding, through the
lusts of their oicn hearts. God's giving them up was the logical cause, or a
cause by way of argument ; their own lusts were the true and natural cause ;
their own they were before they were given up to them, and belonging to
none as the author, but themselves after they were given up to them. The
lust in the heart, and the temptation without, easily close and mix interests
with one another ; as the fire in a coal pit will with the fuel, if the streams
derived into it for the quenching it be dammed up ; the natural passions will
run to a temptation, as the waters of a river tumble towards the sea. When
a man that hath bridled in a high-mettled horse from running out, gives him
the reins, or a huntsman takes off the string that held the dog, and lets
him run after the hare, are they the immediate cause of the motion of the one
or the other ? No ; but the mettle and strength of the horse, and the
natural inclination of the hound, both which are left to their own motions
to pursue their own natural instincts. Man doth 'as naturally tend to sin
as a stone to the centre, or as a weighty thing inclines to a motion to the
earth; it is from the propension of man's nature that he ' drinks up iniquity
like water ;' and God doth no more when he leaves a man to sin, by taking
away the hedge which stopped him, but leave him to his natural inclination.
As a man that breaks up a dam he hath placed, leaves the stream to run in
their natural channel, or one that takes away a prop from a stone to let it
fall, leaves it only to that nature which inclines it to a descent, both have
their motion from their own nature, and man his sin from his own corrup-
tion.* The withdrawing the sunbeams is not the cause of darkness, but the
shadiness of the earth ; nor is the departure of the sun the cause of winter,
but the coldness of the air and earth, which was tempered and beaten back
into the bowels of the earth by the vigour of the sun, upon whose departure
they return to their natural state. The sun only leaves the earth and air
as it found them at the beginning of the spring, or the beginning of the day.
If God do not give a man grace to melt him, yet he cannot be said to com-
municate to him that nature which hardens him, which man hath from him-
* Amyrald de Prcdest , p. 107.

240 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

self. As God was not the cause of the first sin of Adam, which was the
root of all other, so he is not the cause of the following sins, which as
branches spring from that root ; man's free will was the cause of the first
sin, and the corruption of his nature by it the cause of all succeeding sins.
God doth not immediately harden any man, but doth propose those things
from whence the natural vice of man takes an occasion to strengthen and
nourish itself. Hence God is said to ' harden Pharaoh's heart,' Exod. vii. 13,
by concurring with the magicians in turning their rods into serpents, which
stifi'ened his heart against Moses, conceiving him by reason of that to have
no more power than other men, and was an occasion of his further hardening;
and Pharaoh is said to harden himself, Exod. viii. 32 ; that is, in regard of
his own natural passion.

3. God is holy and righteous, because he doth not withdraw from man
till man deserts him. To say that God withdrew that grace from Adam,
which he had afforded him in creation, or anything that was due to him,
till he had abused the gifts of God, and turned them to an end contrary to
that of creation, would be a reflection upon the divine holiness. God was
first deserted by man before man was deserted by God, and man doth first
contemn and abuse the common grace of God, and those relics of natural
light that ' enlighten every man that comes into the world, John i. 9, before
God leaves him to the hurry of his own passions. Ephraim was first
'joined to idols,' before God pronounced the fatal sentence, 'Let him
alone,' Hosea iv. 17. And the heathens first ' changed the glory of the
incorruptible God,' Rom. i. 28, 24, before God withdrew his common grace
from the corrupted creature, and they first ' serve the creature more than
the Creator,' before the Creator gave them up to the slavish chains of their
vile aftections, ver, 25, 26. Israel first cast off God before God cast off
them, but then ' he gave them up to their own heart's lusts, and they walked
in their own counsels,' Ps. Ixxxi. 11, 12. Since sin entered into the world
by the fall of Adam, and the blood of all his posterity was tainted, man
cannot do anything that is formally good ; not for want of faculties, but for
the want of a righteous habit in those faculties, especially in the will ; yet
God discovers himself to man in the works of his hands ; he hath left in
him footsteps of natural reason, he doth attend him with common motions
of his Spirit, corrects him for his faults with gentle chastisements. He is
near unto all in some kind of instructions ; he puts many times providential
bars in their way of sinning, but when they will rush into it ' as the horse
into the battle,' when they will rebel against the light, God doth often leave
them to their own course, sentence ' him that is filthy to be filthy still,'
Piev. xsii. 11, which is a righteous act of God, as he is rector and governor
of the world. Man's not receiving, or not improving what God gives, is the
cause of God's not giving further, or taking away his own, which before he
had bestowed. This is so far from being repugnant to the holiness and
righteousness of God, that it is rather a commendable act of his holiness
and righteousness, as the rector of the world, not to let those gifts continue
in the hand of a man who abuses them contrary to his glory. Who will
blame a father, that after all the good counsels he hath given his son to
reclaim him, all the corrections he hath inflicted on him for his irregular
practice, leaves him to his own courses, and withdraws those assistances
which he scofied at and turned the deaf ear unto ? Or who will blame the
physician for deserting the patient who rejects his counsel, will not follow
his ^prescriptions, but dasheth his physic against the wall ? No man will
blame him, no man will say that he is the cause of the patient's death; but
the true cause is the fury of the distemper, and the obstinacy of the diseased

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 241

person, to which the physician left him. And who can justly blame God in
this case, who yet never denied supplies of grace to any that sincerely
sought it at his hands ? and what man is there that lies under a hardness,
but first was guilty of very provoking sins ? What unholiness is it to
deprive men of those assistances because of their sin, and afterwards to
direct those counsels and practices of theirs which he hath justly given them
up unto, to serve the ends of his own glory in his own methods ?

4. Which will appear further by considering, that God is not obliged to
continue his grace to them. It was at his liberty whether he would give
any renewing grace to Adam after his fall, or to any of his posterity ; he
was at his own liberty to withhold it or communicate it ; but if he were
under any obligation then, surely he must be under less now, since the
multiplication of sin by his creatures ; but if the obligation were none just
after the fall, there is no pretence now to fasten any such obligation on God.
That God had no obligation at first hath been spoken to before ; he is less
obliged to continue his grace after a repeated refusal, and a peremptory
abuse, than he was bound to proffer it after the first apostasy. God cannot
be charged with unholiness in withdrawing his grace after we have received
it, unless we can make it appear that his grace was a thing due to us, as
w^e are his creatures, and as he is the governor of the world. What prince
looks upon himself as obliged to reside in any particular place of his king-
dom ? But suppose he be bound to inhabit in one particular city, yet after
the city rebels against him, is he bound to continue his court there, spend
his revenue among rebels, endanger his own honour and security, enlarge
their charter, or maintain their ancient privileges ? Is it not most just and
righteous for him to withdraw himself, and leave them to their own tumul-
tuousness and sedition, whereby they should eat the fruit of their own
doings ? If there be an obligation [on] God as a governor, it would rather
lie on the side of justice, to leave man to the powder of the devil, whom he
courted, and the prevalency of those lusts he hath so often caressed, and
wrap up in a cloud all his common illuminations, and leave him destitute of
all common w^orkings of his Spirit.

Prop. 8. God's holiness is not blemished by his commanding those things
sometimes which seem to be against nature, or thwart some other of his
precepts. As when God commanded Abraham with his own hand to sacrifice
his son, Gen. xxii. 2, there was nothing of unrighteousness in it. God hath
a sovereign dominion over the lives and beings of his creatures, whereby as
he creates one day he might annihilate the next ; and by the same right
that he might demand the life of Isaac, as being his creature, he might
demand the obedience of Abraham, in a ready return of that to him which
he had so long enjoyed by his grant. It is true, killing is unjust when it
is done without cause, and by private authority ; but the authorit}' of God
surmounts all private and public authority whatsoever. Our lives are due
to him when he calls for them, and they are more than once forfeit to him
by reason of transgression. But howsoever the case is, God commanded
him to do it for the trial of his grace, but suffered him not to do it in favour
to his ready obedience ; but had Isaac been actually slain and offered, how
had it been unrighteous in God, who enacts laws for the regulation of
his creature, but never intended them to the prejudice of the rights of his
sovereignty ? Another case is that of the Israelites bori'owing jewels of the
Eg}'ptians by the order of God, Exod. xi. 2, 3, xii. 36. Is not God Lord
of men's goods, as well as their lives ? What have any they have not
received, and that not as proprietors independent on God, but his stewards ?
and may not he demand a portion of his steward to bestow upon his favourite ?

VOL. II. Q

242 chaknock's works. [Exod, XV. 11.

He that had power to dispose of the Egyptians' goods, had power to order the
Israelites to ask them. Besides, God acted the part of a just judge in
ordering them their wages for their sei-vice in this method, and making their
taskmasters give them some recompence for their unjust oppression so many
years ; it was a command from God therefore, rather for the preservation of
justice (the basis of all those laws which link human society), than any
infringement of it. It was a material recompence in part, though not a
formal one in the intention of the Egyptians ; it was but in part a recom-
pence ; it must needs come short of the damage the poor captives had sus-
tained by the tyranny of their masters, who had enslaved them contrary to
the rules of hospitality, and could not make amends for the lives of the poor
infants of Israel, whom they drowned in the river. He that might for the
unjust oppression of his people have taken away all their lives, destroyed
the whole nation, and put the Israelites into the possession of their lands,
could without any unrighteousness dispose of part of their goods ; and it
was rather an act of clemency to leave them some part, who had doubly
forfeited all. Again, the Egyptians were as ready to lend by God's influence,
as the Israelites were to ask by God's order; and though it was a loan, God,
as sovereign of the world, and Lord of the earth and the fulness thereof,
alienated the property by assuming them to the use of the tabernacle, to
which service most, if not all, of them were afterwards dedicated. God, who
is lawgiver, hath power to dispense with his own law, and make use of his
own goods, and dispose of them as he pleases. It is no unholiness in God
to dispose of that which he hath a right unto. Indeed, God cannot com-
mand that which is in its own nature intrinsecally evil, as to command a
rational creature not to love him, to call God to witness to a lie ; these are
intrinsecally evil ; but for the disposing of the lives and goods of his
creatures, which they have from him in right, and not in absolute propriety,
is not evil in him, because there is no repugnancy in his own nature to such
acts, nor is it anything inconsistent with the natural duty of a creature, and
in such cases he may use what instruments he please.

IV. The point was, that holiness is a glorious perfection of the nature of
God. We have shewed the nature of this holiness in God, what it is, and
we have demonstrated it, and proved that God is holy, and must needs be
so, and also the purity of his nature in all his acts about sin. Let us now
improve it by way of use.

?' Use 1. Is holiness a transcendent perfection belonging to the nature of
God ? The first use shall be of instruction and information.

1. How great and how frequent is the contempt of this eminent perfection
in the Deity ! Since the fall, this attribute, which renders God most amiable
in himself, renders him most hateful to his apostate creature. It is impos-
sible that he that loves iniquity can affect that which is irreconcilably con-
trary to the iniquity he loves. Nothing so contrary to the sinfulness of man
as the holiness of God, and nothing is thought of by the sinner with so
much detestation. How do men account that, which is the most glorious
perfection of the divinity, unworthy to be regarded as an accomplishment of
their own souls ! And when they are pressed to an imitation of it, and a
detestation of what is contrary to it, have the same sentiments in their heart
which the devil had in his language to Christ, * Why art thou come to
torment us before our time ? ' What an enmity the world naturally hath to
this perfection, I think is visible in the practice of the heathen, who among
all their heroes which they deified, elevated none to that dignity among them
for this or that moral virtue that came nearest to it, but for their valour, or

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 243

some usefulness in the concerns of this life. Jllsculapius was deified for his
skill in the cure of diseases, Bacchus for the use of the grape, Vulcan for his
operations hy fire, Hercules for his destroying of tyrants and monsters, but
none for their mere virtue ; as if anything of purity were unworthy their
consideration in the frame of a deity, when it is the glory of all other per-
fections ; so essential it is, that when men reject the imitation of this, God
regards it as a total rejection of himself, though they own all the other
attributes of his nature : Ps. Ixxxi. 11, ' Israel would none of me.' Why?
Because ' they walked not in his ways,' ver. 13, those ways wherein the
purity of the divine nature was most conspicuous. They would own him in
his power, when they stood in need of a deliverance ; they would own him
in his mercy, when they were plunged in distress, but they would not imitate
him in his holiness. This being the lustre of the divine nature, the con-
tempt of it is an obscuring all his other perfections, and a dashing a blot
upon his whole scutcheon. To own all the rest, and deny him this, is to
frame him as an unbeautiful monster, a deformed power. Indeed, all sin is
against this attribute, all sin aims in general at the being of God, but in
particular at the holiness of his being. All sin is a violence to this per-
fection. There is not an iniquity in the world, but directs its venomous
sting against the divine purity. Some sins are directed against his omni-
science, as secret wickedness ; some against his providence, as distrust ;
some against his mercy, as unbelief; some against his wisdom, as neglect-
ing the means instituted by him, censuring his ways and actings ; some
against his power, as trusting in means more than in God, and the immo-
derate fear of men more than of God ; some against his truth, as distrusting
bis promise, or not fearing his threatening ; but all agree together in their
enmity against this, which is the peculiar glory of the Deity. Every one of
them is a receding from the divine image, and the blackness of every one is
the deeper, by how much the distance of it from the holiness of God is
the greater. This contrariety to the holiness of God is the cause of all the
absolute atheism (if there be any such) in the world. What was the reason
' the fool hath said in his heart. There is no God,' but because the fool is
' corrupt, and hath done abominable works,' Ps. xiv. 1. If they believe the
being of ^a God, their own reason will enforce them to imagine him holy ;
therefore, rather than fancy a holy God, they would fain fancy none at all.

In particular,

(1.) The holiness of God is injured, in unworthy representations of God,
and imaginations of him in our own minds. The heathen fell under his
guilt, and ascribed to their idols those vices which their own sensuality in-
clined them to, unworthy of a man, much more unworthy of a god, that
they might find a protection of their crimes in the practice of their idols.
But is this only the notion of the heathens ? May there not be many among
us whose love to their lusts, and desires of sinning without control, move
them to slander God in their thoughts rather than reform their lives, and
are ready to frame, by the power of their imaginative faculty, a God not
only winking, but smiling at their impurities ? I am sure God charges the
impieties of men upon this score, in that psalm (Ps. 1. 21), which seems to
be a representation of the day of judgment, as some gather from verse 6.
When God sums up all together, ' These things hast thou done, and I kept
silence ; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself ;' not
a detester but approver of thy crimes. And the psalmist seems to express
God's loathing of sin in such a manner, as intimates it to be contrary to the
ideas and resemblances men make of him in their minds : Ps. v. 4, ' For
thou art not a God that hast pleasure in wickedness.' As we say in vindi-

244 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

cation of a man, he is not such a man as you imagine him to be ; thou art
not such a Godi as the world commonly imagines thee to be, a God taking
pleasure in iniquity. It is too common for men to fancy God not as he is,
but as they would have him ; strip him of his excellency for their own
security. As God made man after his image, man would dress God after
his own modes, as may best suit the content of his lusts, and encourage him
in a course of sinning ; for when they can frame such a notion of God, as
if he were a countenancer of sin, they will derive from thence a reputation
to their crimes, commit wickedness with an unbounded licentiousness, and
crown their vices with the name of virtues, because they are so like to the
sentiments of that God they fancy. From hence, as the psalmist in the
psalm before mentioned, ariseth that mass of vice in the world ; such con-
ceptions are the mother and nurse of all impiety, I question not but the first
spring is some wrong notion of God in regard of his holiness. We are as
apt to imagine God as we would have him, as the black Ethiopians were to
draw the image of their gods after their own dark hue, and paint him with
their own colour. As a philosopher in Theodoret speaks, if oxen and lions
had hands, and could paint as men do, they would frame the images of
their gods according to their own likeness and complexion. Such notions of
God render him a swinish being, and worse than the vilest idols adored by
the Egyptians, when men fancy a God indulgent to their appetites, and most
sordid lusts.

(2.) In defacing the image of God in our souls. God in the first draught
of man conformed him to his own image, or made him an image of himself,
because we find that in regeneration this image is renewed : Eph. iv. 24,
* The new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holi-
ness.' He did not take angels for his pattern in the first polishing the soul,
but himself. In defacing this image, we cast dirt upon the holiness of God,
which was his pattern in the framing of us, and rather choose to be conformed
to Satan, who is God's grand enemy, to have God's image wiped out of us,
and the devil's pictured in us. Therefore natural men in an unregenerate
state may justly be called devils, since our Saviour called the worst man
Judas so, John vi. 70, and Peter, one of the best, Mat. xvi. 23. And if
this title be given by an infallible judge to one of the worst, and one of the
best, it may without wrong to any be ascribed to all men that wallow in their
sin, which is directly contrary to that illustrious image God did imprint upon
them. How often is it seen that men control the light of their own nature,
and stain the clearest beams of that candle of the Lord in their own spirits,
that fly in the face of their own consciences, and say to them, as Ahab to
Micaiah, Thou didst never jDrophesy good to me ; thou didst never encourage
me in those things that are pleasing to the flesh ; and use it at the same
rate as the wicked king did the prophet, * imprison it in unrighteousness,'
Rom. i. 18, because it starts up in them sometimes sentiments of the hoH-
ness of God, which it represents in the soul of man. How jolly are many
men when the exhalations of their sensitive part rise up to cloud the exactest
principle of moral nature in their minds, and render the monstrous principles
of the law of corruption more hvely ! Whence ariseth the wickednes which
hath been committed with an open face in the world, and the applause that
hath been often given to the worst of villanies ? Have we not known among
ourselves, men to glory in their shame, and esteem that a most genteel
accomplishment of man which is the greatest blot upon his nature, and
which, if it were upon God, would render him no God, but an impure devil,
so that to be a gentleman among us hath been the same as to be an incarnate
devil : and to be a man was to be no better, but worse than a brute ? Vile

ExoD, XV. 11.] god's holiness. 245

wretches ! Is not this a contempt of divine holiness, to kill that divine seed
■which lies languishing in the midst of corrupted nature ? to cut up any
sprouts of it as weeds unworthy to grow in their gardens, and cultivate what
is the seed of hell ? prefer the rotten fruits of Sodom, marked with a divine
curse, before those rehcs of the fruits of Eden, of God's own planting ?

(3.) The holiness of God is injured in charging our sin upon God. No-
thing is more natural to men than to seek excuses for their sin, and transfer
it from themselves to the next at hand ; and rather than fail, shift it upon
God himself; and if they can bring God into a society with them in sin,
they will hug themselves in a security that God cannot punish that guilt,
wherein he is a partner. Adam's children are not of a different disposition
from Adam himself, who, after he was arraigned and brought to his trial,
boggles not at flinging his dirt in the face of God his creator, and accuseth
him as if he had given him the woman, not to be his help but his ruin :
Gen. iii. 12, ' And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with
me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.' He never supplicates for pardon,
nor seeks a remedy, but reflects his crime upon God : had I been alone, as I
was first created, I had not eaten, but the woman whom I received as a special
gift from thee, hath proved my tempter and my bane. When man could not
be like God in knowledge, he endeavoured to make God like him in his crime ;
and when his ambition failed of equalising himself with God, he did, with an
insolence too common to corrupted nature, attempt, by the imputation of his
sin, to equal the divinity with himself. Some think Cain had the same
sentiment in his answer to God's demand, where his brother was, Gen. iv. 9,
' Am I my brother's keeper ?' Art not thou the keeper and governor of the
world ? why didst not thou take care of him, and hinder my killing him, and
drawing this guilt upon myself, and terror upon my conscience ? David
was not behind, when after the murder of Uriah, he sweeps the dirt from
his own door to God's : 2 Sam. xi. 25, ' The sword devoureth one as well
as another,' fathering that solely upon divine providence, which was his
own wicked contrivance ; though afterwards he is more ingenuous in clear-
ing God, and charging himself : Ps. li. 4, ' Against thee, thee only, have I
sinned ;' and he clears God in his judgment too. It is too common for
' the foolishness of man to pervert his way,' and then ' his heart frets
against the Lord,' Prov. xix. 3. He studies mischief, runs in a way of sin,
and when he hath conjured up troubles to himself by his own folly, he
excuseth himself, and with indignation charges God as the author both
of his sin and misery, and sets his mouth against the heavens. It is a
more horrible thing to accuse God as a principal or accessary in our guilt,
than to conceive him to be a favourer of our iniquity ; yet both are bad
enough.

(4.) The holiness of God is injured, when men will study arguments from
the holy word of God to colour and shelter their crimes ; when men will
seek for a shelter for their lies, in that of the midwives to preserve the
children, or in that of Ptahab to save the spies ; as if because God rewarded
their fidelity, he countenanced their sin. How often is Scripture wrested
to be a plea for unbecoming practices, that God in his word may be imagined
a patron for their iniquity ? It is not unknown that some have maintained
their quaffing and carousing from Eccles. viii. 15, ' That a man hath no
better thing under the sun, than to eat, and drink, and be merry ;' and
their gluttony from Mat. xv. 11, ' That which goes into the belly defiles not
a man.' The Jesuits' morals are a transcript of this. How often hath the
passion of our Saviour, the highest expression of God's holiness, been em-
ployed to stain it, and encourage the most debauched practices ' Grace

246 CHAENOCk's WORKS. [EXOD. XV. 11.

hath been turned into wantonness, and the abundance of grace been used
as a blast to increase the flames of sin ; as if God had no other aim in that
work of redemption, but to discover himself more indulgent to our sensual
appetites, and by his severity with his Son, become more gracious to our
lusts. This is to feed the roots of hell with the dews of heaven, to make
grace a pander for the abuse of it, and to employ the expressions of his
hohness in his word to be a sword against the essential holiness of his nature ;
as if a man should draw an apology for his treason out of that law that was
made to forbid, not to protect his rebellion. Not the meanest instrument
in the temple was to be alienated from the use it was by divine order ap-
pointed to, nor was it to be employed in any common use ; and shall the
word of God, which is the image of his holiness, be transferred by base in-
terpretations to be an advocate for iniquity ? Such an ill use of his word
reflects upon that hand which imprinted those characters of purity and
righteousness upon it ; as the misinterpretation of the wholesome laws of a
prince, made to discourage debauchery, reflects upon his righteousness and
sincerity in enacting them.

(5.) The holiness of God is injured, when men will put up petitions to God
to favour them in a wicked design. Such there are ; and taxed by the apostle,
James iv. 3, ' Ye ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts,' who
desired mercies from God with an intent to make them instruments of sin
and weapons of unrighteousness, as it is reported of a thief, that he always
prayed for the success of his robbery. It hath not been rare in the
world to appoint fasts and prayers for success in war manifestly unjust, and
commenced upon breaches of faith. Many covetous men petition God to
prosper them in their unjust gain, as if the blessed God sat in his pure
majesty upon the throne of grace to espouse unjust practices, and make
iniquity prosperous. There are such as ofler sacrifice with an evil mind,
Prov. xxi. 27, to barter with God for a divine blessing to spirit a wicked
contrivance. How great a contempt of the holiness of God is this ! How
inexcusable would it be for a favourite to address himself to a just prince
with this language : Sir, I desire a boon of such lands that lie near me for
an addition to my estate, that I may have supports' for my debauchery, an^
be able to play the villain more powerfully among my neighbours ; hereby
he implies that his prince is a friend to such crimes and wickedness he in-,
tends his petition for. Is not this the language of many men's hearts in
the immediate presence of God ? The order of prayer runs thus, ' Hallowed
be thy name,' first to have a deep sense of the holiness of the divine nature,
and an ardent desire for the glory of it. This order is inverted by asking those
things which are not agreeable to the will of God, not meet for us to ask,
nor meet for God to give, or asking things agreeable to the will of God, but
with a wicked intention ; this is, in effect, to desire God to strip himself
of his holiness, and commit sacrilege upon his own nature to gratify our
lufjts.

(6.) The purity of God is contemned in hating and scofiing at the holi-
ness which is in a creature. Whosoever looks upon the holiness of a creature
as an unlovely thing, can have no good opinion of the amiableness of divine
purity. Whosoever hates those quahties and graces that resemble God in any
person, must needs contemn the original pattern which is more eminent in
God. If there be no comeliness in a creature's holiness to render it grateful
to us, we should say of God himself, were he visible among us, with those in
the prophet, Isa, liii., ' There is no beauty in him that we should desire
him.' Hohness is beautiful in itself. If God be the most lovely being, that
which is a Hkeness to him, so far as it doth resemble him, must needs be

ExoD. XY. 11.] god's holiness. 247

amiable, because it partakes of God ; and therefore those that see no beauty
in an inferior holiness, but contemn it because it is a purity above them,
contemn God much more. He that hates that which is imperfect merely for
that excellency which is in it, doth much more hate that which is perfect
without any mixture or stain. Holiness being the glory of God, the pecu-
liar title of the Deity, and from him derived unto the nature of a creature,
he that mocks this in a person derides God himself ; and when he cannot abuse
the purity in the Deity, he will do it in his image, as rebels that cannot
wrong the king in his person will do it in his picture, and his subjects that
are loyal to him. He that hates the picture of a man, hates the person re-
represented by it much more ; he that hates the beams, hates the sun. The
holiness of a creature is but a beam from that infinite sun, a stream from
that eternal fountain. Where there is a derision of the purity of any crea-
ture, there is a greater reflection upon God in that derision, as he is the
author of it. If a mixed and stained holiness be more the subject of any
man's scoffs than a great deal of sin, that person hath a disposition more
roundly to scoff at God himself, should he appear in that unblemished and
unspotted purity which infinitely shines in his nature. Oh, it is a dangerous
thing to scoif and deride holiness in any person, though never so mean ; such
do deride and scoff at the most holy God.

(7.) The holiness of God is injured by our unprepared addresses to him,
when, like swine, we come into the presence of God with all our mire reek-
ing and steaming upon us. A holy God requires a holy worship ; and if
our best duties, having filth in every part as performed by us, are unmeet
for God, how much more unsuitable are dead and dirty duties to a living and
immense holiness ! Slight approaches and drossy frames speak us to have
imaginations of God as of a slight and sottish being ; this is worse than the
heathens practised, who would purge their flesh before they sacrificed, and make
some preparations in a seeming purity, before they would enter into their
temples. God is so holy, that, were our services as refined as those of angels,
we could not present him with a service meet for his holy nature, Josh.
xxiv. 19. We contemn, then, this perfection when we come before him with-
out due preparation, as if God himself were of an impure nature, and did
not deserve our purest thoughts in our applications to him, as if any blemished
and polluted sacrifice were good enough for him, and his nature deserved no
better. When we excite not those elevated fi-ames of spirit which are due
to such a being, when we think to put him off" with a lame and imperfect
service, we worship him not according to the excellency of his nature, but put
a slight upon his majestic sanctity, when we nourish in our duties those
foolish imaginations which creep upon us, when we bring into and continue
our worldly, carnal, debauched fancies in his presence, worse than the nasty
servants or bemired dogs a man would blush to be attended with in his visits
to a neat person. To be conversing with sordid sensualities when we are
at the feet of an infinite God, sitting upon the throne of his holiness, is as
much a contempt of him, as it would be of a prince, to bring a vessel full of
nasty dung with us, when we come to present a petition to him clothed in
his royal robes ; or, as it would have been to God, if the high priest should
have swept all the blood and excrements of the sacrifices from the foot of the
altar into the holy of holies, and heaped it up before the mercy-seat, where
the presence of God dwelt between the cherubims, and afterwards shovelled
it up into the ark, to be lodged with Aaron's rod and the pot of manna.

(B.) God's holiness is slighted in depending upon our imperfect services to
bear us out before the tribunal of God. This is too ordinary ; the Jews were
often infected with it, Kom. iii. 10, who not well understanding the enormity

248 chaknock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

of their transgressions, the interweaving of sin with their services, and the
unspottedness of the divine purity, mingled an opinion of merit with their
sacrifices, and thought by the cutting the throat of a beast, and offering it
upon God's altar, they had made a sufficient compensation to that holiness
they had ofi"ended ; not to speak of many among the Romanists who have
the same notion, thinking to make satisfaction to God by erecting an hospital
or endowing a church, as if this injured perfection could be contented with
the dregs of their purses, and the offering of an unjust mammon, more
likely to mind God of the injury they have done him, than contribute to the
appeasing of him. But is it not too ordinary with miserable men, whose
consciences accuse them of their crimes, to rely upon the mumblings of a
few formal prayers, and in the strength of them to think to stand before the
tremendous tribunal of God, and meet with a discharge upon this account
from any accusation this divine perfection can present against them ? Nay,
do not the best Christians sometimes find a principle in them that makes
them stumble in their goings forth to Christ, and glorifying the holiness of
God in that method which he hath appointed ; sometimes casting an eye at
their grace, and sticking awhile to this or that duty, and gazing at the glory
of the temple building, while they should more admire the glorious presence
that fills it ? WTiat is all this but a vilifying of the holiness of the divine nature,
as though it would be well enough contented with our impurities and imperfec-
tions, because they look like a righteousness in our estimation ? As though dross
and dung, which are the titles the apostle gives to all the righteousness of a
fallen creature, Philip, iii. 3, were valuable in the sight of God, and sufficient
to render us comely before him. It is a blasphemy against this attribute,
to pretend that anything so imperfect, so daubed, as the best of our services
are, can answer to that which is infinitely perfect, and be a ground of de-
manding eternal life : it is at best to set up a gilded Dagon as a fit com-
panion for the ark of his holiness, our own righteousness as a suitable mate
for the righteousness of God, as if he had repented of the claim he made by
the law to an exact conformity, and thrown off" the holiness of his nature for
the fondling of a corrupted creature. Rude and foolish notions of the
divine purity are clearly evidenced by any confidence in any righteousness
of our own, though never so splendid. It is a rendering the righteousness
of God as dull and obscure as that of men, a mere outside as their own, as
blind as the heathens pictured their Fortune, that knew as little how to dis-
cern the nature and value of the ofierings made to her, as to distribute her
gifts, as if it were all one to them to have a dog or a lamb presented in sacrifice.
As if God did not well understand his own nature when he enacted so holy a
law, and strengthened it with so severe a threatening, which must follow
upon our conceit, that he will accept a righteousness lower than that which
bears some suitableness to the holiness of his own nature and that of his
law, and that he could easily be put ofi" with a pretended and counter-
feit service ! What are the services of the generality of men, but suppositions
that they can bribe God to an indulgence of them in their sins, and by an
oral sacrifice cause him to divest himself of his hatred of their former^ini-
quities, and countenance their following practices ? As the harlot that would
return fresh to her uncleanness, upon the confidence that her peace -offerings
had contented the righteousness of God, Prov. vii. 14 ; as though a small
service could make him wink at our sins and lay aside the glory of his nature,
when, alas ! the best duties in the most gracious persons in this life, are but
as the streams of a spiced dunghill, a composition of myrrh and froth, since
there are swarms of corruptions in their nature, and secret sins that they
need a cleansing from !

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 249

(9.) It is a contemning the holiness of God when we charge the law of
God with rigidness. We cast dirt upon the holiness of God when we blame
the law of God, because it shackles us, and prohibits our desired pleasures;
and hate the law of God, as they did the prophets, because they did not
' prophesy smooth things,' but called to them to ' get them out of the way,
and turn aside out of the path, and cause the Holy One of Israel to cease
from before them,' Isa. xxx. 10, 11. Put us no more in mind of the holi-
ness of God and the holiness of his law ; it is a troublesome thing for us to
hear of it. Let him be gone from us, since he will not countenance our
vices and indulge our crimes. We would rather hear there is no God, than
you should tell us of a holy one. We are contrary to the law when we wish
it were not so exact, and therefore contrary to the holiness God, which set
the stamp of exactness and righteousness upon it. We think him injurious
to our liberty when by his precept he thwarts our pleasure; we wish it of
another frame, more mild, more suitable to our minds. It is the same as if we
should openly blame God for consulting with his own righteousness, and not
with our humours, before he settled his law ; that he should not have drawn
it from the depths of his righteous nature, but squared it to accommodate
our corruption.

This being the language of such complaints, is a reproving God because
he would not be unholy, that we might be unrighteous with impunity. Had
the divine law been suited to our corrupt state, God must have been unholy
to have complied with his rebellious creature. To charge the law with rigid-
ness, either in language or practice, is the highest contempt of God's holi-
ness ; for it is an implicit wish that God were as defiled, polluted, disorderly,
as our corrupted selves.

(10.) The holiness of God is injured opinionatively.

[l.J In the opinion of venial sins. The Romanists divide sins into venial
and mortal. Mortal are those which deserve eternal death ; venial the lighter
sort of sins, which rather deserve to be pardoned than punished, or if
punished, not with an eternal, but temporal punishment. This opinion
hath no foundation in, but is contrary to. Scripture. How can any sin be
in its own nature venial, when the due ' wages of every sin is death,' Rom.
vi. 23 ; and he who ' continues not in everything that the law commands '
falls under a curse. Gal. iii. 10. It is a mean thought of the holiness and
majesty of God to imagine that any sin which is against an infinite majesty,
and as infinite a purity both in the nature of God and the law of God,
should not be considered as infinitely heinous. All sins are transgressions
of the eternal law, and in every one the infinite holiness of God is some way
slighted.

[2.] In the opinion of works of supererogation; that is, such works as
are not commanded by God, which yet have such a dignity and worth in
their own nature, that the performers of them do not only merit at God's
hands for themselves, but fill up a treasure of merit for others that come
short of fulfilling the precepts God hath enjoined. It is such a mean thought
of God's holiness, that the Jews, in all the charges brought against them in
Scripture, were never guilty of. And if you consider what pitiful things
they are which are within the compass of such works, you have sufficient
reason to bewail the ignorance of man, and the low esteem he hath of so
glorious a perfection. The whipping themselves often in a week, extra-
ordinary watchings, fastings, macerating their bodies, wearing a Capuchin's
habit, &c., are pitiful things to give content to an infinite purity: as if the
precept of God required only the inferior degrees of virtue, and the coun-
sels the more high and excellent ; as if the law of God, which the psalmist

250 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

counts perfect, Ps. xix. 7, did not command all good and forbid all evil ;
as if the holiness of God had forgotten itself in the framing the law, and
made it a scanty and defective rule ; and the righteousness of a creature
were not only able to make an eternal righteousness, but surmount it. As
man would be at first as knowing as God, so some of his posterity would be
more holy than God, set up a wisdom against the wisdom of God, and a
purity above the divine purity. Adam was not so presumptuous, he in-
tended no more than an equalling God in knowledge ; but those would
exceed him in righteousness, and not only presume to render a satisfaction
for themselves to the holiness they have injured, but to make a purse for
the supply of others that are indigent, that they may stand before the
tribunal of God with a confidence in the imaginary righteousness of a crea-
ture. How horrible is it for those that come short of the law of God them-
selves, to think that they can have enough for a loan to their neighbours !
An unworthy opinion.

2. Information. It may inform us how great is our fall from God, and
liow distant we are from him. View the holiness of God, and take a pro-
spect of the nature of man, and be astonished to see a person created in the
divine image degenerated into the image of the devil. We are as far fallen
from the holiness of God, which consists in a hatred of sin, as the lowest
point of the earth is from the highest point of the heavens. The devil is
not more fallen from the rectitude of his nature and likeness to God than we
are ; and that we are not in the same condition with those apostate spirits,
is not from anything in our nature, but from the mediation of Christ, upon
which account God hath indulged in us a continuance of some remainders of
that which Satan is wholly deprived of. We are departed from our original
pattern; we were created to live the life of God, that is, a life of holiness,
but now we are 'alienated from the life of God,' Eph. iv. 18; and of a beau-
tiful piece we are become deformed, daubed over with the most defiling mud.
We 'work uncleanness with greediness,' according to our ability as crea-
tures, as God doth work holiness with affection and ardency, according to
his infiniteness as creator. More distant we are from God by reason of sin
than the vilest creature, the most deformed toad or poisonous serpent, is
from the highest and most glorious angel. By forsaking our innocence, we
departed from God as our original copy. The apostle might well say, Rom.
iii. 23, that by sin we are ' come short of the glory of God.' Interpreters
trouble themselves much about that place, ' Man is come short of the glory
of God,' that is, of the holiness of God, which is the glory of the divine
nature, and was pictured in the rational, innocent creature. By the glory
of God is meant the holiness of God ; as 2 Cor. iii. 18, ' Beholding as in a
glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory
to glory; ' that is, the glory of God in the text, into the image of which we
are changed ; but the Scripture speaks of no other image of God but that of
holiness. We are come short of the glory of God, of the holiness of God,
which is the glory of God ; and the image of it, which was the glory of
man. By sin, which is particular in opposition to the purity of God, man
was left many leagues behind any resemblance to God; he stripped off that
which was the glory of his nature, and was the only means of glorifying God
as his creator. The word vari^ouvTai, the apostle uses, is very significant,
2JOSt.poned by sin, an infinite distance from any imitation of God's holiness,
or any appearance before him in a garb of nature pleasing to him. Let us
lament our fall and distance from God.

3. Information. All unholiness is vile and opposite to the nature of God.
It is such a loathsome thing, that the purity of God's eye is averse from

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 251

beholding, Hab. i. 3. It is not said there that he will not, but he cannot
look on evil ; there cannot be any amicableness between God and sin, the
natures of both ai'e so directly and unchangeably contrary to one another.
Holiness is the life of God, it endures as long as his life ; he must be eter-
nally averse from sin, he can live no longer than he lives in the hatred and
loathing of it. If he should for one instant cease to hate it, he would cease
to live. To be a holy God is as essential to him as to be a living God ; and
he would not be a living, but a dead God, if he were in the least point of
time an unholy God. He cannot look on sin without loathing it, he cannot
look on sin but his heart riseth against it. It must needs be most odious
to him, as that which is against the glory of his nature, and directly oppo-
site to that which is the lustre and varnish of all his other perfections. It is
the ' abominable thing which his soul hates,' Jer. xliv. 4 ; the vilest terms
imaginable are used to signify it. Do you understand the loathsomeness
of a miry swine, or the nauseousness of the vomit of a dog ? These are
emblems of sin, 2 Peter ii. 22. Can you endure the steams of putrefied
carcasses from an open sepulchre ? Rom. iii. 23. Is the smell of the stink-
ing sweat or excrements of a body delightful ? the word '^u-agla in James
i. 21 signifies as much. Or is the sight of a body overgrown with scabs
and leprosy grateful to you ? So vile, so odious is sin in the sight of God.
It is no light thing, then, to fly in the face of God, to break his eternal law,
to dash both the tables in pieces, to trample the transcript of God's own nature
under our feet, to cherish that which is inconsistent with his honour, to lift
up our heels against the glory of his nature, to join issue with the devil in
stabbing his heart and depriving him of his life. Sin, in every part of it,
is an opposition to the holiness of God, and consequently an envying him a
being and life as well as a glory. If sin be such a thing, ' ye that love the
Lox'd hate evil.'

4. Information. Sin cannot escape a due punishment. A hatred of
unrighteousness, and consequently a will to punish it, is as essential to God-as
a love of righteousness. Since he is not as an heathen idol, but hath eyes
to see, and purity to hate every iniquity, he will have an infinite justice to
punish whatsoever is against infinite holiness. As he loves everything that is
amiable, so he loathes everything that is filthy, and that consequently without
any change ; his whole nature is set against it, he abhors nothing but this.
It is not the devil's knowledge or activity that his hatred is terminated in, but
the malice and unholiness of his nature ; it is this only is the object of his
severity. It is in the recompence of this only that there can be a manifes-
tation of his justice.

Sin must be punished ; for,

(1.) His detestation of sin must be manifested. How should we certainly
know his loathing of it, if he did not manifest by some act how ungrateful it
is to him ? As his love to righteousness would not appear without rewarding
it, so his hatred of iniquity would be as little evidenced without punishmg
it. His justice is the great witness to his purity. The punishment, there-
fore, inflicted on the wicked, shall be, in some respect, as great as the rewards
bestowed upon the righteous. Since the hatred of sin is natural to God, it
is as natural to him to shew one time or other his hatred of it ; and since
men have a conceit that God is like them in impurity, there is a necessity
of some manifestation of himself to be infinitely distant from those conceits
they have of him : Ps. 1. 21, • I will reprove thee, and set them in order
before thine eyes.' He would also encourage the injuries done to his holi-
ness, favour the extravagancies of the creature, and condemn, or at least
slight, the righteousness both of his own nature and his sovereign law. What

252 chaenock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

way is there for God to manifest this hatred, but by threatening the sinner?
And what would this be but a vain aifrightment, and ridiculous to the sin-
ner, if it were never to be put in execution ? There is an indissoluble con-
nection between his hatred of sin and punishment of the ofi'ender : Ps. xi.
5, 6, ' The wicked his soul hates : upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire
and brimstone,' &c. He cannot approve of it without denying himself, and
a total impunity would be a degree of approbation.

The displeasure of God is eternal and irreconcilable against sin ; for sin
being absolutely contrary to his holy nature, he is eternally contrary to it.
If there be not therefore a way to separate the sin from the sinner, the sin-
ner must lie under the displeasure of God ; no displeasure can be manifested
without some marks of it upon the person that lies under that displeasure.
The holiness of God will right itself of the wrongs done to it, and scatter
the profaners of it at the greatest distance from him, which is the greatest
punishment that can be inflicted ; to be removed far from the fountain of
life is the worst of deaths. God can as soon lay aside his purity, as always
forbear his displeasure against an impure person ; it is all one not to hate it,
and not to manifest his hatred of it,

(2.) As his holiness is natural and necessary, so is the punishment of
unholiness necessary to him. It is necessary that he should abominate sin,
and therefore necessary he should discountenance it. The severities of God
against sin are not vain scarecrows, they have their foundation in the right-
eousness of his nature ; it is because he is a righteous and holy God, that
he ' will not forgive our transgressions and sins,' Josh. xxiv. 19, that is, that
he will punish them. The throne of his holiness is a ' fiery flame,' Dan.
vii. 9, there is both a pure light and a scorching heat. Whatsoever is con-
trary to the nature of God, will fall under the justice of God ; he would else
violate his own nature, deny his own perfection, seem to be out of love with
his own glory and life. He doth not hate it out of choice, but from the
immutable propension of his nature ; it is not so free an act of his will as the
creation of man and angels, which he might have forborne as well as efi"ected.
As the detestation of sin results from the universal rectitude of his nature,
so the punishment of sin follows upon that, as he is the righteous governor
of the world. It is as much against his nature not to punish it, as it is
against his nature not to loathe it ; he would cease to be holy, if he ceased
to hate it ; and he would cease to hate it, if he ceased to punish it. Neither
the obedience of our Saviour's life, nor the strength of his cries, could put a
bar to the cup of his passion ; God so hated sin, that when it was but im-
puted to his Son, without any commission of it, he would bring a hell upon
his soul. Certainly, if God could have hated sin without punishing it, his
Son had never felt the smart of his wrath. His love to his Son had been
strong enough to have caused him to forbear, had not the holiness of his
nature been stronger, to move him to inflict a punishment according to the
demerit of his sin. God cannot but be holy, therefore cannot but be just,
because injustice is a part of unholiness.

(3.) Therefore there can be no communion between God and unholy
spirits. How is it conceivable that God should hate the sin, and cherish
the sinner with all his filth in his bosom ; that he should eternally detest
the crime, and eternally fold the sinner in his arms ? Can less be expected
from the purity of his nature, than to separate an impure soul, as long as it
remains so ? Can there be any delightful communion between those whose
natures are contrary ? Darkness and light may as soon kiss each other, and
become one nature ? God and the devil may as soon enter into an eternal
league and covenant together. For God to ' have pleasure in wickedness,*

ExoD. XV. 11. J god's holiness. 253

and to admit ' evil to dwell with him,' 'are things equally impossible to his
nature, Ps. v. 4 ; while he hates impurity, he cannot have communion with
an impure person. It may as soon be expected that God should hate him-
self, offer violence to his own nature, lay aside his purity as an abominable
thing, and blot his own glory, as love an impure person, entertain him as his
delight, and set him in the same heaven and happiness with himself, and
his holy angels ; he must needs loathe him, he must needs banish him from
his presence, which is the greatest punishment. God's holiness and hatred
of sin necessarily infer the punishment of it.

5. Information. There is therefore a necessity of the satisfaction of the
holiness of God by some sufficient mediator. The divine purity could not
meet with any acquiescence in all mankind after the fall. Sin was hated,
the sinner would be ruined, unless some way were found out to repair the
wrongs done to the holiness of God ; either the sinner must be condemned
for ever, or some satisfaction must be made, that the holiness of the divine
nature might eternally appear in its full lustre. That it is essential to the
nature of God to hate all unrighteousness, as that which was absolutely
repugnant to his nature, none do question. That the justice of God is so
essential to him, as that sin could not be pardoned without satisfaction, some
do question ; though this latter seems rationally to follow upon the former.*
That holiness is essential to the nature of God is evident, because else God
may as much be conceived without purity, as he might be conceived without
the creating the sun or stars. No man can in his right wits frame a right
notion of a deity without purity. It w^ould be a less blasphemy against the
excellency of God, to conceit him not knowing, than to imagine him not
holy; and for the essentialness of his justice, Joshua joins both his holiness and
his jealousy as going hand in hand together : Josh. xxiv. 19, ' He is a holy
God, he is a jealous God, he will not forgive your sin.'

But consider only the purity of God, since it is contrary to sin, and con-
sequently hating the sinner ; the guilty person cannot be reduced to God,
nor can the hohness of God have any complacency in a filthy person, but as
fire hath in stubble, to consume it. How the holy God should be bi'ought
to delight in man, without a salvo for the rights of his holiness, is not to be
conceived without an impeachment of the nature of God. The law could
not be abolished ; that would reflect indeed upon the righteousness of the
lawgiver ; to abolish it, because of sin, would imply a change of the rectitude
of his nature. Must he change his holiness for the sake of that which was
against his holiness, in a compliance with a profane and unrighteous creature ?
This should engage him rather to maintain his law than to null it. And to
abrogate his law as soon as he had enacted it, since sin stepped into the
world presently after it, would be no credit to his wisdom.

There must be a reparation made of the honour of God's holiness ; by
ourselves it could not be without condemnation, by another it could not be
•without a sufficiency in the person ; no creature could do it. All the
creatures being of a finite nature, could not make a compensation for the
disparagements of infinite holiness. He must have despicable and vile
thoughts of this excellent perfection, that imagines that a few tears, and the
glavering fawnings at the death of a creature, can be sufficient to repair the
wrongs, and restore the rights of this attribute. It must therefore be such
a compensation as might be commensurate to the holiness of the divine
nature and the divine law, which could not be wrought by any but him that
was possessed of a Godhead, to give eflicacy and exact congruity to it. The
person designed and appointed by God for so great an affair, was ' one in
* Tiirretin. de Satisfac. p. 8.

254 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

the form of God, one equal with God,' Philip, ii. 6; who could not be termed
by such a title of dignity if he had not been equal to God in the universal
rectitude of the divine nature, and therefore in his holiness. The punish-
ment due to sin is translated to that person for the righting divine holiness,
and the righteousness of that person is communicated to the sinner for the
pardon of the offending creature.

If the sinner had been eternally damned, God's hatred of sin had been
evidenced by the strokes of his justice ; but his mercy to a siuner had lain
in obscurity. If the sinner had been pardoned and saved without such a
reparation, mercy had been evident ; but his holiness had hid its head for
ever in his own bosom. There was therefore a necessity of such a way to
manifest his purity, and j'et to bring forth his mercy, that mercy might not
alway sigh for the destruction of the creature, and that holiness might not
mourn for the neglect of its honour.

6. Information. Hence it will follow, there is no justification of a sinner
by anything in himself. After sin had set foot in the world, man could
present nothing to God acceptable to him, or bearing any proportion to the
holiness of his law, till God set forth a person upon whose account the
acceptation of our persons and services is founded : Eph. i. G, ' Who hath
made us accepted in the beloved.' The infinite purity of God is so glorious,
that it shames the holiness of angels, as the light of the sun dims the light
of the fire ; much more will the righteousness of fallen man, who is vile, and
' drinks up iniquity like water,' vanish into nothing in his presence. With
what self-abasement and abhorrence ought he to be possessed, that comes as
short of the angels in purity as a dunghill doth of a star ! The highest
obedience that ever was performed by any mere man, since lapsed nature,
cannot challenge any acceptance with God, or stand before so exact an
inquisition. What person hath such a clear innocence, and unspotted
obedience in such a perfection, as in any degree to suit the holiness of the
divine nature ! Ps. cxliii. 2, ' Enter not into judgment with thy servant,
for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.' If God should debate the
case simply with man in his own person, without respecting the mediator,
he were not able to ' answer one of a thousand.' Though we are his
servants, as David was, and perform a sincere service, yet there are many
little motes and dust of sin in the best works, that cannot be undiscovered
from the eye of his holiness ; and if we come short in the least of what the
law requires, we are ' guilty of all,' James ii. 10. So that ' in thy sight shall
no man living be justified ; ' in the sight of thy infinite holiness, which
hates the least spot ; in the sight of thy infinite justice, which punishes the
least transgression.

God would descend below his own nature, and vilify both his knowledge
and purity, should he accept that for a righteousness and holiness which is
not so in itself ; and nothing is so which hath the least stain upon it con-
trary to the nature of God. The most holy saints in Scripture, upon a
prospect of his purity, have cast away all confidence in themselves ; every
flash of the divine purity has struck them into a deep sense of their own
impurity and shame for it : Job xlii. 6, ' Wherefore I abhor myself in dust
and ashes.' What can the language of any man be that lies under a sense
of infinite holiness, and his own defilement in the least, but that of the
prophet : Isa. vi. 5, ' Woe is me, I am undone ' 1 And what is there in the
world can administer any other thought than this, unless God be considered
in Christ, ' reconciling the world to himself ; ' as a holy God, so righted
as that he can dispense with the condemnation of a sinner without dispensing
with his hatred of sin ; pardoning the sin in the criminal, because it hath

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 255

been punished in the surety. That righteousness which God hath ' set
forth' for justification is not our own, but a ' righteousness which is of God,'
Philip, iii. 9, 10, of God's appointing, and of God's performing; appointed
by the Father, who is God, and performed by the Son, who is one with the
Father ; a righteousness surmounting that of all the glorious angels, since
it is an immutable one, which can never fail, an ' everlasting righteousness,'
Dan. ix. 24 ; a righteousness wherein the holiness of God can acquiesce, as
considered in itself, because it is a righteousness of one equal with God,
As we therefore dishonour the divine majesty, when we insist upon our own
bemired righteousness for our justification (as if a ' mortal man were as just
as God,' and a 'man as pure as his maker,' Job iv. 17), so we highly
honour the purity of his nature when we charge ourselves with folly, acknow-
ledge ourselves unclean, and accept of that righteousness which gives a full
content to his infinite purity. There can be no justification of a sinner by
aaything in himself.

7. It informs us, if holiness be a glorious perfection of the divine nature,
then the deity of Christ might be argued from hence. He is indeed di"ai-
fied with the title of 'the Holy One,' Acts iii. 14, 16, a title often given to
God in the Old Testament ; and he i^ called, ' The holy of holies,' Dan.
ix. 24; but because the angels seem to be termed holy ones, Dan. iv. 13, 17,
and the most sacred place in the temple was also called the holy of holies,
I shall not insist upon that. But you find our Saviour particularly applauded
by the angels, as holy, when this perfection of the divine nature, together
with the incommunicable name of God, are linked together, and 'ascribed
to him : Isa. vi. 3, ' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts : and the
whole earth is full of his glory,' which the apostle interprets of Christ,
John xii. 39, 41. 'Isaiah [saith] again, 'He hath blinded their eyes, and
hardened their hearts ; that they should not see with their eyes, nor under-
stand with their hearts, and be converted, and I should heal them. These
things said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spake of him.' He that
Isaiah saw environed with the seraphims in a reverential posture before his
face, and praised as most holy by them, was the true and eternal God ; such
acclamations belong to none but the great Jehovah, God blessed for ever.
But, saith John, it was the glory of Christ that Isaiah saw in this vision ;
Christ therefore is ' God blessed for ever,' of whom it was said, ' Holy, holy,
holy. Lord God of hosts.'* The evangelist had been speaking of Christ,
the miracles which he wrought, the obstinacy of the Jews against believing
on him ; his (flonj therefore is to be referred to the subject he had been
speaking of. The evangelist was not speaking of the Father, but of the
Son, and cites those words out of Isaiah ; not to teach anything of the
Father, but to shew that the Jews could not believe in Christ. He speaks
of him that had wrought so many miracles ; but Christ wrought those
miracles ; he speaks of him whom the Jews refused to believe on ; bat
Christ was the person they would not believe on, while they acknowledged
God. It was the glory of this person Isaiah saw, and this person Isaiah
spake of, if the words of the evangelist be of any credit. The angels are
too holy to give acclamations belonging to God, to any but him that is God.

8. It informs us that God is fully fit for the government of the world.
The righteousness of God's nature qualifies him to be judge of the world.
If he were not perfectly righteous and holy, he were uncapable to govern
and judge the world : Rom. iii. 5, ' If there be unrighteousness with God,
bow shall he judge the world ?' ' God will not do wickedly, neither will
the Almighty pervert judgment,' Job xxxiv 12. How despicable is a judge

* Placeus de Deitat. Christi in locum.

256 chaenock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

that wants innocence ! As omniscience fits God to be a judge, so holiness
fits him to be a righteous judge : Ps. i. 6, ' The Lord knows,' that is, loves,
• the way of the righteous : but the way of the ungodly shall perish.'
' 9. Information. If holiness be an eminent perfection of the divine
nature, the Christian religion is of a divine extraction. It discovers the
holiness of God, and forms the creature to a conformity to him. It gives
us a prospect of his nature, represents him in the ' beauty of holiness,' Ps.
ex. 3, more than the whole glass of the creation. It is in this evangelical
glass the glory of the Lord is beheld, and rendered amiable and imitable,
2 Cor. iii. 18. It is a doctrine * according to godliness,' 1 Tim. vi. 3,
directing us to live the life of God ; a life worthy of God, and worthy of our
first creation by his hand. It takes us off from ourselves, fixeth us upon a
noble end, points our actions and the scope of our lives to God. It quells
the monsters of sin, discountenanceth the motes of wickedness ; and it is
no mean argument for the divinity of it, that it sets us no lower a pattern
for our imitation, than the holiness of the divine majesty. God is exalted
upon the throne of his holiness in it, and the creature advanced to an image
and resemblance of it : 1 Peter i. 16, * Be ye holy, for I am holy.'

Use 2. The second use is for comfort. This attribute frowns upon lapsed
nature, but smiles in the restorations made by the gospel. God's holiness,
in conjunction with his justice, is terrible to a guilty sinner, but now, in
conjunction with his mercy, by the satisfaction of Christ, it is sweet to a
believing penitent. In the first covenant, the purity of his nature was
joined with the rigours of his justice ; in the second covenant, the purity of
his nature is joined with the sweetness and tenderness of his mercy. In
the one, justice flames against the sinner in the right of injured holiness ;
in the other, mercy yearns towards a believer, with the consent of righted
holiness. To rejoice in the holiness of God is the true and genuine spirit
of a renewed man : ' My heart rejoiceth in the Lord.' What follows ?
' There is none holy as the Lord,' 1 Sam. ii. 1, 2. Some perfections of the
divine nature are astonishing, some afi'righting, but this may fill us both with
astonishment at it, and a joy in it.

1. By covenant we have an interest in this attribute as well as any other.
In that clause of God's being our God, entire God with all his glory, all his
perfections are passed over as a portion, and a gracious soul is brought into
union with God as his God, not with a part of God, but with God in the
simplicity, extent, integrity of his nature, and therefore in this attribute.
And upon some account it may seem more in this attribute than in any other,
for if he be our God, he is our God in his life and glory, and therefore in
his purity especially, without which he could not live, he could not be happy
and blessed. Little comfort will it be to have a dead God or a vile God
made over us, and, as by this covenant he is our Father, so he gives us his
nature, and communicates his holiness in all his dispensations, and in those
that are severest as well as those that are sweetest : Heb. xii. 10, ' But he
corrects us for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.' Not
simply ' partakers of holiness ' but of ' his holiness,' to have a portraiture of
it in our nature, a medal of it in our hearts, a spark of the same nature
with that immense splendour and flame in himself. The holiness of a
covenant soul is a resemblance of the holiness of God, and formed by it, as
the picture of the sun in a cloud is a fruit of his beams, and an image of its
author. The fulness of the perfection of holiness remains in the nature of
God, as the fulness of the light doth in the sun ; yet there are transmissions
from the sun to the moon, and it is a light of the same nature both in the
one and in the other. The holiness of a creature is nothing else but the

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 257

reflection of the divine holiness upon it ; and to make the creature capable
of it, God takes various methods, according to his covenant grace.

2. This attribute renders God a fit object for trust and dependence. The
notion of an unholy and unrighteous God, is an uncomfortable idea of him,
and beats off our hands from laying any hold of him. It is upon this attri-
bute the reputation and honour of God in the world is built. What encour-
agement can we have to believe him, or what incentives could we have to
serve him, without the lustre of this in his nature ? The very thought of
an unrighteous God, is enough to drive men at the greatest distance from
him. As the honesty of a man gives^a reputation to his word, so doth the
holiness of God give credit to his promise. It is by this he would have us
stifle our fears, and fortify our trust : Isa xli. 14, ' Fear not, thou worm
Jacob, and ye men of Israel ; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy
Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.' He will be in his actions what he is in
his nature. Nothing shall make him defile his own excellency. Unright-
eousness is the ground of mutability ; but the promise of God doth never
fail, because the rectitude of his nature doth never languish. Were his
attributes without the conduct of this, they would be altogether formidable.
As this is the glory of all his other perfections, so this only renders him
comfortable to a believing soul. Might we not fear his power to crush us,
his mercy to overlook us, his wisdom to design against us, if this did not
influence them ! What an oppression is power without righteousness in the
hand of a creature, destructive instead of protecting ; the devil is a mighty
spirit, but not fit to be trusted, because he is an impure spirit. When God
would give us the highest security of the sincerity of his intentions, he
swears by this attribute, Ps. Ixxxix. 35. His holiness as well as his truth,
is laid to pawn for the security of his promise. As we make God the judge
between us and others, when we swear by him, so he makes his holiness
the judge between himself and his people, when he swears by it.

(1.) It is this renders him fit to be confided in for the answer of our
prayers. This is the ground of his readiness to give. ' If you, being evil,
know how to give good gifts, how much more shall your Father which is in
heaven give good things to them that ask him ?' Mat. vii. 11. Though the
holiness of God be not mentioned, yet it is to be understood ; the emphasis
lies in those words, if you heiinj evil ; God is then considered in a disposition
contrary to this, which can be nothing but his righteousness. If you that
are unholy, and have so much corruption in you to render you cruel, can
bestow upon your children the good things they want, how much more shall
God, who is holy, and hath nothing in him to check his mercifulness to his
creatures, grant the petitions of his suppliants ! It was this attribute edged
the fiduciary importunity of the souls under the altar, for the revenging
their blood unjustly shed upon the earth : Rev. vi. 10, ' How long, 0 Lord,
holy and true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the
earth ?' Let not thy hoHness stand with folded arms, as careless of the
eminent suflerings of those that fear thee ; we implore thee by the holiness
of thy nature, and the truth of thy word.

(2.) This renders him fit to be confided in, for the comfort of our souls
in a broken condition. The reviving the hearts of the spiritually afflicted is a
part of the holiness of his nature : Isa. Ivii. 15, ' Thus saith the high and
lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and
holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive
the spirit of the humble.' He acknowlegeth himself the lofty One, they might
therefore fear he would not revive them, but he is also the holy One, and
therefore he will refresh them ; he is not more lofty than he is holy. Besides

VOL. II. B

258 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

the argument of the immutability of his promise, and the might of his
power, here is the holiness of his nature moving him to pity his drooping
creature. His promise is ushered in with the name of power, ' high and lofty
One,' to bar their distrust of his strength, and with a declaration of hia

♦ holiness,' to check any despair of his will. There is no ground to think I
should be false to my word or misemploy my power, since that cannot be,
because of the holiness of my name and nature.

(3.) This renders him fit to be confided in for the maintenance of grace,
and protection of us against our spiritual enemies. What our Saviour
thought an argument in prayer, we may well take as a ground of our confi-
dence. In the strength of this he puts up his suit, when in his mediatory
capacity he intercedes for the preservation of his people : John xvii. 11,

* Holy Father, keep through thy own name those that thou hast given me,
that they may be one, as we are.' Holy Father, not merciful Father, or power-
ful, or wise Father, but holy, and, verse 25, righteous Father. Christ pleads that
attribute for the performance of God's word, which was laid to pawn when
he passed his word, for it was by his holiness that he swore, ' that his seed
should endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before him,' Ps. Ixxxix.
36, which is meant of the perpetuity of the covenant which he had made with
Christ, and is also meant of the preservation of the mystical seed of David,
and the perpetuating his loving-kindness to them, ver. 32, 33. Grace is an
image of God's holiness, and therefore the holiness of God is most proper
to be used as an argument to interest and engage him in the preservation of
it. In the midst of church provocations he will not utterly extinguish, be-
cause he is the holy One in the midst of her, Hos. xi. 9 ; nor in the midst
of judgments will he condemn his people to death, because he is their holy
One, Hab. i. 12, but their enemies shall be ordained for judgment, and
established for correction. One prophet assures them in the name of the
Lord upon the strength of this perfection, and the other upon the same
ground is confident of the protection of the church, because of God's holi-
ness engaged in an inviolable covenant.

(3.) Comfort. Since holiness is a glorious perfection of the nature of
God, he will certainly value every holy soul. It is of a greater value with
him than the souls of all men in the world that are destitute of it ; wicked
men are the worst of vileness, mere dross and dunghill ; Ps. xii. 8, ' The
vilest men, /T)^^ Purity then, which is contrary to wickedness, must be the
precious thing in his esteem ; he must needs love that quality which he is
most pleased with in himself, as a father looks with most delight upon the
child which is possessed with those dispositions he most values in his own
nature. ' His countenance doth behold the upright,' Ps. xi. 7. He looks
upon them with a full and open face of favour, with a countenance clear,
unmasked, and smiling, with a face full of delight. Heaven itself is not such
a pleasing object to him, as the image of his own uncreated holiness, in the
created holiness of men and angels ; as a man esteems that most which is
most like him of his own generation, more than a piece of art, which is
merely the product of his wit or strength. And he must love holiness in
the creature ; he would not else love his own image, and consequently would
undervalue himself. He despiseth the image the wicked bears, Ps. Ixxiii. 20,
but he cannot disesteem his own stamp on the godly ; he cannot but delight
in his own work, his choice work, the master-piece of all his works, the
new creation of things, that which is next to himself, as being a divine nature
like himself, 2 Pet. i. 4. When he overlooks strength, parts, knowledge, he
cannot overlook this ; ' he sets apart him that is godly for himself,' Ps. iv.
3, as a peculiar object to take pleasm-e in ; he reserves such for his own com-

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 259

placency, when he leaves the rest of the world to the devil's power ; he
is choice of them above all his other works, and will not let any have so
great a propriety in them as himself. If it be so dear to him here in its
imperfect and mixed condition, that he appropriates it as a peculiar object
for his own delight, how much more will the unspotted purity of gloriiied
saints be infinitely pleasing to him, so that he will take less pleasure in the
material heavens than in such a soul. Sin only is detestable to God, and
when this is done away, the soul becomes as lovely in his accouat, as before
it was loathsome.

4. It is comfort upon this account, that God will perfect holiness in every
upright soul. We many times distrust God and despond in ourselves, be-
cause of the infinite holiness of the divine nature, and the dunghill corrup-
tions in our own ; but the holiness of God eugagsth him to the preservation of
it, and consequently to the perfection of it ; as appears by our Saviour's
argument, John xvii. 11, ' Holy Father, keep through thy own name those
whom thou hast given me.' "To what end ? ' That they may become as we
are,' one with us in the resemblances of purity. And the holiness of the
soul is used as an argument by the psalmist : Ps. Ixxxvi. 2, ' Preserve my
soul, for I am holy,' that is, I have au ardent desire to holiness ; thou hast
separated me from the mass of the corrupted world, preserve and perfect me
with the assembly of the glorified choir. The more holy any are, the more
communicative they are. God being most holy, is most communicative of
that which he most esteems in himself, and delights to see in his creature ;
he is therefore more ready to impart his holiness to them that beg for it,
than to communicate his knowledge or his power. Though he were holy,
yet he let Adam fall, who never petitioned his holiness to preserve him ; he
let him fall, to declare the holiness of his own nature, which had wanted its
due manifestation without it ; but since that cannot be declared in a higher
manner than it hath been already in the death of the surety that bore our
guilt, there is no fear he should cast the work out of his hands, since the
design of the permission of man's apostasy in the discovery of the perfections
of his nature has been fully answered. The finishing the good work he hath
begun, bath a relation to the glory of Christ, and his own glory in Christ to
be manifested in the day of his appearing, Philip, i. 6, wherein the gloiy,
both of his own holiness and the holiness of the mediator, are to receive
their full manifestation. As it is a part of the holiness of Christ to sanctify
his church, Eph, v. 26, till not a wrinkle or spot be left, so it is the part of
God not to leave that work imperfect, which his holiness hath attempted a
second time to beautify his creature with. He will not cease exalting this
attribute, which is the believer's by the new covenant, till he utters that ap-
plauding speech of his own work, Cant. iv. 7, ' Thou art all fair, my love,
there is no spot in thee.'

Use 3. Is for exhortation. Is holiness an eminent perfection of the
divine nature ? Then,

1. Let us get and preserve right and strong apprehensions of this divine
perfection. Without a due sense of it, we can never exalt God in our hearts ;
and the more distinct conceptions we have of this and the rest of his attri-
butes, the more we glorify him. When Moses considered God as his
strength and salvation, he would exalt him, Exod. xv. 2, and he could never
break out in so admirable a doxology as that in the text, without a deep
sense of the glory of his purity, which he speaks of with so much admiration.
Such a sense will be of use to us,

(1.) In promoting genuine convictions. A deep consideration of the
holiness of God cannot but be followed with a deep consideration of our im-

260 chaenock's wokks. [Exod. XV. 11.

pure and miserablei condition by reason of sin ; we cannot glance upon it
without reflections upon our own vileness. Adam no sooner heard the voice
of a holy God in the garden, but he considered his own nakedness with
shame and fear, Gen. iii. 10, much less can we fix our minds upon it, but
we must be touched with a sense of our own uncleanness. The clear beams
of the sun discover that filthiness in our garments and members, which was not
visible in the darkness of the night. Impure metals are discerned by com-
paring them with that which is pure and perfect in its kind. The sense of
guilt is the first natural result upon a sense of this excellent perfection, and
the sense of the imperfection of our own righteousness is the next. Who
can think of it, and reflect upon himself as an object fit for divine love ? Who
can have a due thought of it, without regarding himself as stubble before a
consuming fire ? Who can, without a confusion of heart and face, glance
upon that pure eye, which beholds with detestation the foul motes as well as
the filthier and bigger spots ? When Isaiah saw his glory, and heard how
highly the angels exalted God for this perfection, he was in a cold sweat,
ready to swoon, till a seraphim with a coal from the altar both purged and
revived him, Isa. vi. 5-7. They are sound and genuine convictions, which
have the prospect of divine purity for their immediate spring, and not a fore-
sight of our own misery, when it is not the punishment we have deserved,
but the holiness we have ofiended, most grates our hearts. Such convictions
are the first rude draughts of the divine image in our spirits, and grateful
to God because they are an acknowledgment of the glory of this attribute,
and the first mark of honour given to it by the creature ; those that never
had a sense of their own vileness, were alway destitute of a sense of God's
holiness. And by the way, we may observe, that those that scoff at any for
hanging down the head under the consideration and conviction of sin (as is
too usual with the world), scoff' at them for having deeper apprehensions of
the purity of God than themselves, and consequently make a mock of the
holiness of God, which is the ground of those convictions ; a sense of this
would prevent such a damnable reproaching.

(2.) A sense of this will render us humble in the possession of the greatest
holiness a creature were capable of. ' We are apt to be proud, with the Pha-
risee, when we look upon others wallowing in the mire of base and unnatural
lusts ; but let any clap their wings, if they can, in a vain-boasting and exul-
tation, when they view the holiness of God. What torch, if it had reason,
would be proud and swagger in its own light, if it compared itself with the
sun ! * Who can stand before this holy Lord God ?' is the just reflection of
the holiest person, as it was of those, 1 Sam. vi. 20, that had felt the marks
of his jealousy after their looking into the ark, though likely out of affection
to it, and triumphant joy at its return. When did the angels testify, by the
covering of their faces, their weakness to bear the lustre of his majesty, but
when they beheld his glory ! When did they signify, by their covering their
feet, the shame of their own vileness, but when their hearts were fullest of
the applaudings of this perfection ! Isa. vi. 2, 3. Though they found them-
selves without spot, yet not with such a holiness, that they could appear
either with their faces or feet unveiled or unmasked in the presence of God.
Doth the immense splendour of this attribute engender shaming reflections
in those pure spirits ? What will it, what should it do in us, that dwell in
houses of clay, and creep up and down with that clay upon our backs, and
too much of it in our hearts ? The stars themselves, which appear beauti-
ful in the night, are masked at the awaking of the sun. What a dim light
is that of a glow-worm to that of the sun ! The apprehensions of this made
the elders humble themselves in the midst of their glory, by ' casting down

ExoD. XY. 11.1 god's holiness. 261

their crowns before his throne,' R«v. iv. 8, 10 ; a metaplior taken from the
triumphing generals among the Romans, who hung up their victorious laurels
in the capitol, dedicating them to their gods, acknowledging them their supe-
riors in strength, and authors of their victory. This self-emptiness at the
consideration of divine purity, is the note of the true church represented by
the four and twenty elders, and a note of a true member of the church ;
whereas boasting of perfection and merit is the property of the antichristian
tribe, that have mean thoughts of this adorable perfection, and think them-
selves more righteous than the unspotted angels. What a self-annihilation
is there in a good man, when the sense of divine purity is most lively in
him; yea, how detestable is he to himself? There is as little proportion
between the holiness of the divine majesty and that of the most righteous
creature, as there is between the nearness of a person that stands upon a
mountain to the sun, and of him that beholds him in a vale ; one is nearer
than the other, but it is an advantage not to be boasted of, in regard of the
vast distance that is between the sun and the elevated spectator.

(3.) This would make us full of an afiectionate reverence in all our
approaches to God. By this perfection God is rendered venerable, and fit
to be reverenced by his creature ; and magnificent thoughts of it in the crea-
tui-e would awaken him to an actual reverence of the divine majesty :
Ps. cxi. 9, ' Holy and reverend is his name ;' a good opinion of this would
engender in us a sincere respect towards him ; we should then ' serve the
Lord with fear,' as the expression is, Ps. ii. 11 ; that is, be afi-aid to cast
anything before him that may oftend the eyes of his purity. Who would
ventm-e rashly and garishly into the presence of an eminent moralist, or of
a righteous king upon his throne ? The fixedness of the angels arose from
the continual prospect of this. What if we had been with Isaiah when he
saw the vision, and beheld him in the same glory, and the heavenly choir
in their reverential postiu'e in the service of God ; would it not have barred
our wanderings, and staked us down to our duty ? Would not the fortify-
ing an idea of it in om- minds produce the same effect ? It is for want of
this we carry om-selves so loosely and unbecomingly in the divine presence,
with the same or meaner affections than those wherewith we stand before
some vile creature, that is our superior in the world ; as though a piece of
filthy flesh were more valuable than this perfection of the divinity. How
doth the psalmist double his exhortation to men to sing praise to God :
Ps. xlvii. 6, * Sing praise to God, sing praises ; sing praise to our King,
sing praise,' because of his majesty, and the purity of his dominion : and
ver. 8, ' God reigns over the heathen ; God sits upon the throne of his
holiness.' How would this elevate us in praise, and prostrate us in prayer,
when we praise and pray with an understanding and insight of that nature
we bless or implore ; as he speaks, ver. 7, * Sing ye praise with understand-
ing.' The holiness of God in his government and dominion, the holiness of
his nature, and the holiness of his precepts, should beget in us an humble
respect in our approaches. The more we grow in a sense of this, the more
shall we advance in the true performance of all our duties.* Those nations
which adored the sun, bad they at first seen his brightness wrapped and
masked in a cloud, and paid a veneration to it, how would their adorations
have mounted to a gi-eater point, after they had seen it in its full brightness,
shaking off those veils, and chasing away the mists before it ; what a pro-
found reverence would they have paid it, when they beheld it in its glory and
meridian brightness ? Our reverence to God in all our addresses to him
will arrive to greater degrees, if every act of duty be ushered in, and seasoned
* Amyrald, Moral, torn. v. p. 402.

202 ' charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

with the thoughts of God as sitting upon a throne of holiness ; we shall
have a more becoming sense of our own vileness, a greater ardour to his
service, a deeper respect in his presence, if our understanding be more
cleared, and possessed with notions of this perfection. Thus take a view of
God in this part of his glory, before you fall down before his throne, and
assure yourselves you will find your hearts and services quickened with a
new and lively spirit.

(4.) A due sense of this perfection in God would produce in us a fear of
God, and arm us against temptations and sin. What made the heathens so
wanton and loose, but the representations of their gods as vicious. Who
would stick at adulteries and more prodigious lusts, that can take a pattern
for them from the person he adores for a deity ! Upon which account Plato
would Lave poets banished from his commonwealth, because by dressing up
their gods in wanton garbs in their poems, they encouraged wickedness in
the people ; but if the thoughts of God's holiness were impressed upon us,
we should regard sin with the same eye, mark it with the same detestation
in our measures, a? God himself doth. So far as we are sensible of the
divine purity, we shouid account sin vile, as it deserves ; we should hate it
entirely, without a grain of love to it, and hate it perpetually : Ps. cxix. 104,
' Through thy precepts I get understanding ; therefore I hate every false
way.' He looks into God's statute-book, and thereby arrives to an under-
standing of the purity of his nature, whence his hatred of iniquity com-
menced. This would govern our motion, check our vices ; it would make
us tremble at the hissing of a temptation : when a corruption did but peep
out, and put forth its head, a look to the divine purity would be attended
with a fresh convoy to resist it. There is no such fortification as to be
wrapped up in the sense of this : this would fill us with an awe of God : we
should be ashamed to admit any filthy thing into us, which we know is
detestable to his pure eye. As the approach of a grave and serious man
makes children hasten their trifles out of the way, so would a consideration
of this attribute make us cast away our idols, and fling away our ridiculous
thoughts and designs.

(5.) A due sense of this perfection would inflame us with a vehement
desire to be conformed to him. All our desires would be ardent to regulate
ourselves according to this pattern of holiness and goodness, which is not to
be equalled ; the contemplating it as it shines forth in the face of Christ
will ' transform us into the same image,' 2 Cor. iii. 19. Since our lapsed
state, we cannot behold the holiness of God in itself without afii'ightment ;
nor is it an object of imitation, but as tempered in Christ to our view.
When we cannot without blinding ourselves look upon the sun in its
brightness, we may behold it through a coloured glass, whereby the lustre
of it is moderated without dazzling our eyes. The sense of it will furnish
us with a greatness of mind, that little things will be contemned by us ;
motives of a greater alloy would have little influence upon us ; we should
have the highest motives to every duty, and motives of the same strain
which influence the angels above. It would change us, not only into an
angelical nature, but a divine nature. We should act like men of another
sphere, as if we had received our original in another world, and seen with
angels the ravishing beauties of heaven. How little would the mean employ-
ments of the world sink us into dirt and mud ! How often hath the
meditation of the courage of a valiant man, or acuteness and industry of a
learned person, spurred on some men to an imitation of them, and transformed
them into the same nature ; as the looking upon the sun imprints an
image of the sun upon our eye, that we seem to behold nothing but the sun

EXOD. XV. 11.] GODS HOLINESS. 2G3

a while after. The view of the divine puritj would fill us with a holy
generosity to imitate him, more than the examples of the best men upon
earth. It was a saying of a heathen, that if virtue were visible, it would
kindle a noble flame of love to it in the heart by its ravishing beauty. Shall
the infinite purity of the author of all virtue come short of the strength of
a creature ? Can we not render that visible to us by frequent meditation,
which though it be invisible in its nature, is made visible in his law, in his
ways, in his Son ? It would make us ready to obey him, since we know he
cannot command anything that is sinful, but what is holy, just, and good.
It would put all our affections in their due place, elevate them above the
creature, and subject them to the Creator.

(6.) It would make us patient and contented under all God's dispensa-
tions. All penal evils are the fruits of his holiness, as he is judge and
governor of the world. He is not an arbitrary judge, nor doth any sentence
pronounced, nor warrant for execution issue from him, but what bears upon
it a stamp of the righteousness of his nature ; he doth nothing by passion
or unrighteousness, but according to the eternal law of his own unstained
nature, which is the rule to him in his works, the basis and foundation of
his throne and sovereign dominion, Ps. Ixxxix. 14, * Justice,' or righteous-
ness, ' and judgment are the habitation of thy throne ; ' upon these his
sovereign power is estabUshed, so that there can be no just complaint or
indictment brought against any of his proceedings with men. How doth
our Saviour, who had the highest apprehensions of God's holiness, justify
God in his deepest distresses, when he cried and was not answered in the
particular he desired, in that prophetic psalm of him : Ps. xxii. 2, 3, * I cry
day and night, but thou hearest not.' Thou seemest to be deaf to all my
petitions, ' afar off from the words of my roaring, but thou art holy.' I cast
no blame upon thee ; all thy dealings are squared by thy holiness, this is
the only law to thee, in this I acquiesce. It is part of thy holiness to hide
thy face from me, to shew thereby thy detestation of sin. Our Saviour
adores the divine purity in his sharpest agony, and a like sense of it would
guide us in the same steps to acknowledge and glorify it in our greatest
desertions and affiictions, especially since, as they are the fruit of the holi-
ness of his nature, so they are the means to impart to us clearer stamps of
holiness, according to that in himself, which is the original copy, Heb.
xii. 10. He melts us down as gold, to fit us for the receiving a new im-
pression, to mortify the affections of the flesh, and clothe us with the graces
of his Spirit. The due sense of this would make us to submit to his stroke,
and to wait upon him for a good issue of his dealings.

2. Exhortation. Is holiness a perfection of the divine nature ? Is it the
glory of the Deity ? Then let us glorify this holiness of God. Moses
glorifies it in the text, and glorifies it in a song, which was a copy for all
ages. The whole corporation of seraphims have their mouths filled with
the praises of it. The saints, whether militant on'earth, or triumphant in
heaven, are to continue the same acclamation, ' Holy, holy, holy. Lord God
of hosts,' Rev. iv. 8. Neither angels nor glorified spirits exalt at the same
rate the power which formed them creatures, nor goodness which preserves
them in a blessed immortality, as they do holiness, which they bear some
beams of in their own nature, and whereby they are capacitated to stand
before his throne. Upon the account of this, a debt of praise is demanded
of all rational creatures by the psalmist : Ps. xcix. 3, ' Let them praise thy
great and terrible name, for it is holy.' Not so much for the greatness of
his majesty, or the treasures of his justice, but as they are considered in
conjunction with his holiness, which renders them beautiful ; * for it is holy.'

264 cha.rnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

Grandeur and majesty simply in themselves are not objects of praise, nor do
they merit the acclamations of men, when destitute of righteousness ; this
only renders everything else adorable, and this adorns the divine greatness
with an amiableness : Isa. xii. 6, ' Great is the Holy One of Israel in the
midst of thee,' and makes his might worthy of praise, Luke i. 49. In
honouring this, which is the soul and spirit of all the rest, we give a
glory to all the perfections which constitute and beautify his nature ; and
without the glorifying this we glorify nothing of them, though we should
extol every other single attribute a thousand times. He values no other
adoration of his creatures, unless this be interested, nor accepts anything as
a glory from them : Lev. x. 3, 'I will be sanctified in them that come near
me, and I will be glorified.' As if he had said. In manifesting my name to
be holy, you truly, you only honour me. And as the Scripture seldom
speaks of this perfection without a particular emphasis, it teaches us not to
think of it without a special elevation of heart. By this act only, while we
are on earth, can we join concert with the angels in heaven ; he that doth not
honour it, delight in it, and in the meditation of it, hath no resemblance of
it; he hath none of the image, that dehghts not in the original. Everything
of God is glorious, but this most of all. If he built the wo'rld principally
for anything, it was for the communication of his goodness, and display of
his holiness. He formed the rational creature to manifest his holiness in
that law whereby he was to be governed. Then deprive not God of the
design of his own glory.

We honour this attribute,

(1.) When we make it the ground of our love to God ; not because he
is gracious to us, but holy in himself. As God honours it in loving him-
self for it, we should honour it by pitching our aifections upon him chiefly
for it. What renders God amiable to himself, should render him lovely to
all his creatures. Isa. xhi, 21, ' The Lord is well pleased for his righteous-
ness' sake.' If the hatred of evil be the immediate result of a love to God,
then the pecuHar object or term of our love to God must be that perfection
which stands in dii'ect opposition to the hatred of evil. Ps. xcvii. 10,
' Ye that love the Lord hate evil.' When we honour his holiness in every
stamp and impression of it, his law, not principally because of its useful-
ness to us, its accommodateness to the order of the world, but for its innate
purity, and his people, not for our interest in them so much as for bearing
upon them this glittering mark of the Deity, we honom- then the purity of
the lawgiver, and the excellency of the sanctifier.

(2.) We honour it when we regard chiefly the illustrious appearance of
this in his judgments in the world. In a case of temporal judgment, Moses
celebrates it in the text ; in a case of spiritual judgments, the angels applaud
it in Isaiah. All his severe proceedings are nothing but the strong breath-
ings of this attribute. Purity is the flash of his revenging sword. If he
did not hate evil, his vengeance would not reach the committers of it. He
is a 'refiner's fii-e' in the day of his anger, Mai. iii. 2. By his separating
judgments, he ' takes away the wicked of the earth like dross,' Ps. cxix. 119.
How is his holiness honoured, when we take notice of his sweeping out the
rubbish of the world ; how he suits punishment to sin, and discovers his
hatred of the matter and cii'cumstances of the evil in the matter and circum-
stances of the judgment. This perfection is legible in every stroke of his
sword ; we honour it when we read the syllables of it, and not by standing
amazed only at the greatness and severity of the blow, when we read how
holy he is in his most terrible dispensations. For as in them God magnifies
the greatness of his power, so he sanctifies himself ; that is, declares the

ExoD. XV. 11. J god's holiness. 265

purity of his nature as a revenger of all impiety : Ezek. xxxviii, 22, 23,
* And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood ; and I will
rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the people that are with him,
an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I
magnify myself, and sanctify myseK.'

(3.) We honour this attribute when we take notice of it in every accom-
plishment of his promise, and every grant of a mercy. His truth is but a
branch of his righteousness, a sUp from this root. He is ' glorious in hoU-
ness ' in the account of Moses, because he ' led forth his people whom he
had redeemed,' Exod. xv. 13 : his people, by a covenant with their fathers,
being the God of Moses, the God of Israel, and the God of their fathers.
Ver. 2, ' My God, and my father's God, I wiU exalt thee.' For what? For
his faithfulness to his promise. The holiness of God, which Mary, Luke
i. 49, magnifies, is summed up in this, the help he afforded his servant
Israel ' in the remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers,
to Abraham, and his seed for ever,' ver. 54, 55. The certainty of his cove-
vant mercy depends upon an unchangeableness of his holiness. What are
' sure mercies,' Isa. Iv. 3, are ' holy mercies' in the Septuagint, and in Acts
xiii. 34, which makes that translation canonical. His nearness to answer
us when we call upon him for such mercies, is a fruit of the holiness of his
name and nature ; Ps. cxlv. 17, ' The Lord is holy in all his works ; the
Lord is nigh to all them that call upon him.' Hannah, after a return of
prayer, sets a particular mark upon this in her song, 1 Sam. ii. 2, ' There
is none holy as the Lord ; ' separated from all dross, finn to his covenant,
and righteous in his suppHants that confide in him and plead his word.
When we observe the workings of this in every return of prayer, we honour
it ; it is a sign the mercy is really a return of prayer, and not a mercy of
course, bearing upon it only the characters of a common providence. This
was the perfection David would bless for the catalogue of mercies in Ps.
ciii. 1, &c., ' Bless his hohj name.' Certainly one reason why sincere prayer
is so delightful to him, is because it puts him upon the exercise of this his
beloved perfection, which he so much delights to honour. Since God acts
in all those as the governor of the world, we honour him not, unless we
take notice of that righteousness which fits him for a governor, and is the
inward spring of all his motions : Gen. xviii. 25, ' Shall not the Judge of all
the earth do right ? ' It was his design in his pity to Israel, as well as the
calamities he intended against the heathens, to be ' sanctified in them ; ' that
is, declared holy in his merciful as well as his judicial procedure, Ezek.
xxxvi. 21, 23. Hereby God credits his righteousness, which seemed to be
forgotten by the one and contemned by the other ;* he removes by this all
suspicion of any unfaithfulness in him.

(4.) We honour this attribute when we trust his covenant and promise
against outward appearances. Thus our Saviour in the prophecy of him,
Ps. xxii. 2-4, when God seemed to bar up the gates of his palace against
the entry of any more petitions ; this attribute proves the support of the
Ptedeemer's soul : ' But thou art holy, 0 thou that inhabitest the praises of
Israel.' As it refers to what goes before, it has been twice explained ; as it
refers to what follows, it is a ground of trust, ' Thou inhabitest the praises
of Israel.' Thou hast had the praises of Israel for many ages for thy hoh-
ness. How ? ' Our fathers trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them ; '
they honoured thy holiness by their trust, and thou didst honour their faith
by a deliverance ; thou always hadst a purity that would not shame nor con-
found them. I will trust in thee as thou art holy, and expect the breaking
* Sanct. in Ice.

2n0 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

ont of this attribute for my good as well as my predecessors : ' 'Our fathers
trusted in thee,' &c.

(5.) We honour this attribute when we shew a greater aflFection to the
marks of his holiness in times of the greatest contempt of it. As the
psalmist, Ps. cxix. 126, 127, ' They have made void thy law. Therefore I
love thy commandments above gold.' While they spurn at the purity of
thy law, I will value it above the gold they possess ; I will esteem it as gold
because others count it as dross. By their scorn of it my love to it shall be
the warmer, and my hatred of iniquity shall be the sharper. The disdain
of others should inflame us with a zeal and fortitude to appear in the behalf
of his despised honour.

We honour this holiness many other ways : by preparation for our
addresses to him out of a sense of his purity ; when we imitate it. As he
honours us by teaching us his statutes, Ps. cxix. 135, so we honour him by
learning and observing them. When we beg of him to shew himself a
refiner of us, to make us more conformable to him in holiness, and bless
him for any communication of it to us, it renders us beautiful and lovely in
his sight.

To conclude ; to honour it is the way to engage it for us. To give it the
glory of what it hath done by the arm of power for our rescue from sin, and
beating down our corruptions at his feet, is the way to see more of his mar-
vellous works, and behold a clearer brightness. As unthankfulness makes
him withdraw his grace, Eom. i. 21, 24, so glorifying him causes him to
impart it. God honours men in the same way they honour him. When
we honour him by acknowledging his purity, he will honour us by com-
municating of it to us. This is the way to derive a greater excellency to
our souls.

3. Exhortation. Since holiness is an eminent perfection of the divine nature,
let us labour after a conformity to God in this perfection. The nature of
God is presented to us in the Scriptures, both as a pattern to imitate, and a
motive to persuade the creature to holiness, 1 John iii. 3. Since it is there-
fore the nature of God, the more our natures are beautified with it the more
like we are to the divine nature, Mat, v. 48, Lev. xi. 44. It is not the
pattern of angels nor archangels that our Saviour or his apostle proposeth
for our imitation, but the original of all purity, God himself, 1 Peter
i. 15, 16. The same that created us to be imitated by us. Nor is an equal
degree of purity enjoyed by us ; though we are to be pure, and perfect, and
merciful as God is, yet not essentially so; for that would be to command us
an impossibility in itself, as much as to order us to cease to be creatures,
and commence gods. No creature can be essentially holy but by participa-
tion from the chief fountain of holiness, but we must have the same kind of
holiness, the same truth of holiness ; as a short line may be as straight as
another, though it parallel it not in the immense length of it; a copy may
have the likeness of the original, though not the same perfection. We can-
not be good without eyeing some exemplar of goodness as the pattern. No
pattern is so suitable as that which is the highest goodness and purity.
That limner that would draw the most excellent piece fixes his eyes upon
the most excellent pattern. He that would be a good orator, or poet, or
artificer, considers some person most excellent in each kind as the object of
his imitation. Who so fit as God to be viewed as the pattern of holiness
in our intendment of, and endeavour after, holiness? The Stoics, one of the
best sects of philosophers, advised their disciples to pitch upon some emi-
nent example of virtue, according to which to form their lives, as Socrates,
&c. But true holiness doth not only endeavour to live the life of a good

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 267

man, but chooses to live a divine life. As before the man was ' alienated
from the life of God,' Eph. iv. 19, so upon his return he aspires after the
life of God. To endeavour to be like a good man is to make one image
like another, to set our clocks by other clocks without regarding the sun ;
but true holiness consists in a likeness to the most exact sampler. God
being the first purity, is the rule as well as the spring of all purity in the
creature, the chief and first object of imitation. We disown ourselves to be
his creatures, if we breathe not after a resemblance to him in what he is
imitable. There was in man, as created according to God's image, a natu-
ral appetite to resemble God. It was at first planted in him by the author
of his nature. The devil's temptation of him by that motive to transgress
the law had been as an arrow shot against a brazen wall, had there not been
a desire of some likeness to his Creator engraven upon him, Gen. iii. 5. It
would have had no more influence upon him than it could have had upon a
mere animal. But man mistook the term ; he would have been like God in
knowledge, whereas he should have affected a greater resemblance of him
in purity. Oh that we could exemplify God in our nature ! Precepts may
instruct us more, but examples alfect us more; one directs us, but the other
attracts us. What can be more attractive of our imitation than that which
is the original of all purity in both men and angels ?

This conformity to him consists in an imitation of him,

(1.) In his law. The purity of his nature was first visible in this glass ;
hence it is called a ' holy law,' Rom. vii. 12, a ' pure law,' Ps. xix. 8.
Holy and pure, as it is a ray of the pure nature of the Lawgiver. When
our lives are a comment upon his law, they are expressive of his holiness ;
we conform to his holiness when we regulate ourselves by his law, as it is a
transcript of his holiness ; we do not imitate it when we do a thing in the
matter of it agreeable to that holy rule, but when we do it with respect to
the purity of the Lawgiver beaming in it. If it be agreeable to God's will,
and convenient for some design of our own, and we do anything only with a
respect to that design, we make not God's holiness discovered in the law
our rule, but oar own conveniency. It is not a conformity to God, but a
conformity of our actions to self. As in abstinence from intemperate courses,
not because the holiness of God in his law hath prescribed it, but because
the health of our bodies, or some noble contentments of life, require it ; then
it is not God's holiness that is our rule, but our own security, conveniency,
or something else which we make a god to ourselves.

It must be a real conformity to the law ; our holiness should shine as
really in the practice as God's purity doth in the precept. God hath not a
pretence of purity in his nature, but a reality ; it is not only a sudden boil-
ing up of an admiration of him, or a starting wish to be like him, from some
sudden impression upon the fancy (which is a mere temporary blaze), but
a settled temper of soul, loving everything that is like him, doing things out
of a firm desire to resemble his purity in the copy he hath set ; not a rest-
ing in negatives, but aspiring to positives. Holy and harmless are distinct
things ; they were distinct qualifications in our high priest in his obedience
to the law, Heb. vii. 2G, so they must be in us.

(2.) In his Christ. As the law is the transcript, so Christ is the image
of his holiness. The glory of God is too dazzling to be beheld by us. The
acute eye of an angel is too weak to look upon that bright sun without
covering his face. We are much too weak to take our measures from that
purity which is infinite in his nature ; but he hath made his Son like us,
that by the imitation of him in that temper and shadow of human flesh, we
may arrive to a resemblance of him, 2 Cor. iii. 18. Then there is a con-

268

chaenock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

formity to him, when that which Christ did is drawn in lively colours in the
soul of a Christian ; when as he died upon the cross, we die to our sins ;
as he rose from the grave, we rise from our lusts ; as he ascended on high,
we mount our souls thither ; when we express in our lives what shined in
his, and exemplify in our hearts what he acted in the world, and become
[one] with him, as he was separate from sinners. The holiness of God in
Christ is our ultimate pattern. As we are not only to believe in Christ, but
by Christ in God, John xiv. 1, so we are not only to imitate Christ, but the
hohness of God as discovered in Christ.

And to enforce this upon us, let us consider,

(1.) It is this only wherein he commands our imitation of him. We are
not commanded to be mighty and wise, as God is mighty and wise, but
' be holy as I am holy.' The declarations of his power are to enforce our
subjection, those of his wisdom to encourage our direction by him ; but this
only to attract our imitation. When he saith, ' I am holy,' the immediate
inference he makes is, ' be ye so too,' which is not the proper instruction
from^ any other perfection.* Man was created by divine power, and har-
monized by divine wisdom, but not after them, or according to them, as the
true image ; this was the prerogative of divine holiness, to be the pattern of
his rational creature, Eph. iv. 24, Col. iii. 10. Wisdom and power were
subservient to this, the one as the pencil, the other as the hand that moved
it. The condition of a creature is too mean to have the communications of
the divine essence, the true impressions of his righteousness and goodness
we are only capable of. It is only in those moral perfections we are said to
resemble God. The devils, those impure and ruined spirits, are nearer to
him in strength and knowledge than we are ; yet in regard of that natural
and intellectual perfection, never counted like him, but at the greatest dis-
tance from him, because at the greatest distance from his purity. God
values not a natural might, nor an acute understanding, nor vouchsafes such
perfections the glorious title of that of his image. Plutarch saith, God is
angry with those that imitate his thunder or lightning, his works of majesty,
but delighteth with those that imitate his virtue. t In this only we can
never incur any reproof from him, but for falling short of him and his glory.
Had Adam endeavoured after an imitation of this, instead of that of divine
knowledge, he had escaped his fall, and preserved his standing. And had
Lucifer wished himself like God in this as well as his dominion, he had still
been a glorious angel, instead of being now a ghastly devil. To reach after
a union with the supreme being in regard of holiness, is the only generous
and commendable ambition.

(2.) This is the prime way of honouring God. We do not so glorify God
by elevated admirations, or eloquent expressions, or pompous services of
him, as when we aspire to a conversing with him with unstained spirits, and
live to him in living like him. The angels are not called holy for applauding
his purity, but conforming to it. The more perfect any creature is in the
rank of beings, the more is the Creator honoured ; as it is more for the
honour of God to create an angel or man, than a mere animal ; because
there are in such, clearer characters of divine power and goodness, than in
those that are inferior. The more perfect any creature is morally, the more
is God glorified by that creature ; it is a real declaration that God is the
best and most amiable being, that nothing besides him is valuable, and
worthy to be the object of our imitation. It is a greater honouring of him,
than the highest acts of devotion, and the most religious bodily exercise, or
* In this, saith Plato, God is sv fj^iOu 'Tta^dbuy [la.
t Eugub. de perenni Philoso. lib. vi. cap. vi.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 2G9

the singing this song of Moses in the text, with a triumphant spirit ; as it
is more the honour of a father to be imitated in his virtues by his son, than
to have all the glavering commendations by the tongue or pen of a vicious
and debauched child. By this we honour him in that perfection which is
dearest to him, and counted by him as the chiefest glory of his nature. God
seems to accept the glorifying this attribute, as if it were a real addition to
that holiness which is infinite in his nature, and because infinite, cannot
admit of any increase ; and therefore the word sanctified is used instead of
glorified. Isa. viii, 13, ' Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be
your fear, and let him be your dread.' And xxix. 23, They shall sanctify
the Holy One of Jacob, and fear the God of Israel.' This sanctification of
God is by the fear of him, which signifies in the language of the Old Testa-
ment, a reverence of him, and a righteousness before him. He doth not
say, when he would have his power or wisdom glorified, ' Empower me,' or
' Make me wise ;' but when he would have holiness glorified by the creature,
it is ' Sanctify me ;' that is, manifest the purity of my nature by the holiness
of your lives. But he expresseth it in such a term, as if it were an addi-
tion to this infinite perfection ; so acceptable it is to him, as if it were a
contribution from his creature for the enlarging an attribute so pleasing to
him, and so glorious in his eye. It is, as much as in the creature lies, a
preserving the life of God, since this perfection is his life ; and that he would
as soon part with his life as part with his purity. It keeps up the reputa-
tion of God in the world, and attracts others to a love of him ; whereas un-
worthy carriages defame God in the eyes of men, and bring up an ill report
of him, as if he were such a one as those that profess him, and walk un-
suitably to their profession, appear to be.

(3.) This is the excellency and beauty of a creature. The title of beauty
is given to it in Ps. ex. B, beauties, in the plural number, as comj)rehending
in it all other beauties whatsoever. What is a divine excellency cannot be
a creature's deformity. The natural beauty of it is a representation of the
divinity ; and a holy man ought to esteem himself excellent, it bein^ such
in his measure as his God is, and puts his principal felicity in the pos-
session of the same purity in truth. This is the refined complexion of the
angels that stand before his throne. The devils lost their comeliness when
they fell from it. It was the honour of the human nature of our Saviour,
not only to be united to the Deity, but to be sanctified by it. He w^as ' fairer
than all the children of men,' because he had a holiness above the children of
men : ' grace was poured into his lips,' Ps. xlv. 2. It was the jewel of the
reasonable nature in paradise. Conformity to God was man's oricrinal hap-
piness in his created state, and what was naturally so, cannot but be immu-
tably so in its own nature. The beauty of every copied thing consists in
its likeness to the original ; everything hath more of loveliness, as it hath
greater impressions of its first pattern ; in this regard holiness hath more of
beauty on it, than the whole creation, because it partakes of a greater excel-
lency of God than the sun, moon, and stars. No greater glory can be, than
to be a conspicuous and visible image of the invisible, and holy, and blessed
God. As this is the splendour of all the divine attributes, so it is the flower of
all a Christian's graces, the crown of all religion ; it is the glory of the Spirit.
In this regard the 'king's daughter' is said to be ' all glorious within,' Ps.
xlv. 13. It is more excellent than the soul itself, since the greatest soul is
but a deformed piece without it, a diamond without lustre.* What are the
noble faculties of the soul without it, but as a curious rusty watch, a delicate
heap of disorder and confusion ! It is impossible there can be beauty,
* Vaiighan, p. 4, 5.

270 charnock's wobks. [Exod. XV. 11.

where there are a multitude of ' spots and wrinkles,' that blemish a counte-
nance, Eph. V. 27. It can never be in its true brightness, but when it is
perfect in purity, when it regains what it was possessed of by creation, and
dispossessed of by the fall, and recovers its primitive temper. We are not
so beautiful by being the work of God, as by having a stamp of God upon
us. Worldly greatness may make men honourable in the sight of creeping
worms. Soft Hves, ambitious reaches, luxurious pleasures, and a pompous
religion, render no man excellent and noble in the sight of God. This is not
the excellency and nobility of the Deity which we are bound to resemble ;
other lines of a divine image must be drawn in us to render us truly
excellent.

(4.) It is our life. What is the life of God, is truly the life of a rational
creature.* The life of the body consists not in the perfection of its members,
and in the integrity of its organs ; these remain when the body becomes a
carcass ; but in the presence of the soul, and its vigorous animation of every
part, to perform the distinct offices belonging to each of them. The life of
the soul consists not in its being, or spiritual substance, or the excellency
of its faculties of understanding and will, but in the moral and becoming
operations of them. The spirit is only ' life because of righteousness,' Rom.
viii. 10. The faculties are turned by it, to acquit themselves in their
functions, according to the will of God ; the absence of this doth not only
deform the soul, but in a sort annihilate it, in regard of its true essence and
end. Grace gives a Christian being, and a want of it is the want of a true
being, 1 Cor. xv. 10. When Adam divested himself of his original right-
eousness, he came under the force of the threatening, in regard of a spiritual
death. Every person is morally ' dead whiles he lives' an unholy life,
1 Tim. V. 6. What life is to the body, that is righteousness to the Spirit ;
and the greater measure of holiness it hath, the more of life it hath, because
it is in a greater nearness, and partakes more fully of the fountain of life.
Is not that the most worthy life, which God makes most account of, with-
out which his life could not be a pleasant and blessed life, but a life worse
than death ! ^Vhat a miserable life is that of the men of the world, that
are carried with greedy inclinations to all manner of unrighteousness, whither
their interests or their lusts invite them ! The most beautiful body is a
carcass, and the most honourable person hath but a brutish life, Ps. xlix. 20 ;
miserable creatures when their life shall be extinct without a divine rectitude,
when all other things will vanish as the shadows of the night at the appear-
ance of the sun.

Holiness is our life.

(5.) It is this only fits us for communion with God. Since it is our
beauty and our life, without it, what communion can an excellent God have
with deformed creatures, a living God with dead creatures ? ' Without
holiness none shall see God,' Heb. xii. 14. The creature must be stripped
of his unrighteousness, or God of his purity, before they can come together.
Likeness is the ground of communion and of delight in it. The opposition
between God and unholy souls is as great as that between hgbt and dark-
ness, 1 John i. 6. Divine fruition is not so much by a union of presence as
a union of nature. Heaven is not so much an outward as an inward life ;
the foundation of glory is laid in grace ; a resemblance to God is our vital
happiness, without which the vision of God would not be so much as a
cloudy and shadowy happiness, but rather a torment than a felicity ; unless
we be of a like nature to God, we cannot have a pleasing fruition of him.
Some philosophers think that if our bodies were of the same nature with the
* Amyrald in Heb. p. 101, 102.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 271

heavens, of an ethereal substance, the nearness of the sun would cherish,
not scorch us. Were we partakers of a divine nature, we might enjoy God
with delight ; whereas remaining in our unlikeness to him, we cannot think
of him, and approach to him without terror. As soon as sin had stripped
man of the image of God, he was an exile from the comfortable presence of
God, unworthy for God to hold any correspondence with. He can no more
delight in a defiled person than a man can take a toad into intimate converse
with him ; he would hereby discredit his own nature, and justify our im-
purity. The holiness of a creature only prepares him for an eternal con-
junction with God in glory. Enoch's walking with God was the cause of
his being so soon wafted to the place full of a fruition of him ; he hath as
much delight in such as in heaven itself; one is his habitation as well as
the other. The one is his habitation of glory, and the other is the house of
his pleasure. If he dwell in Zion, it must be a ' holy mountain,' Joel iii. 17,
and the members of Zion must be upheld in their rectitude and integrity
before they be ' set before the face of God for ever,' Ps. xh. 12. Such are
styled his jewels, his portion, as if he lived upon them, as a man upon his
inheritance. As God cannot delight in us, so neither can we delight in
God without it. We must ' purity ourselves as he is pure,' if we expect to
' see him as he is,' 1 John iii. 2, 3, in the comfortable glory and beauty of
his nature, else the sight of God would be terrible and troublesome. We
cannot be satisfied with the likeness of God at the resurrection, unless we
have a righteousness wherewith to 'behold his face,' Ps. xvii. 15. It is a
vain imagination in any to think that heaven can be a place of happiness to
him, in whose eye the beauty of holiness, which fills and adorns it, is an
unlovely thing ; or that any can have a satisfaction in that divine purity
which is loathsome to him in the imitations of it. We cannot enjoy him,
unless we resemble him ; nor take any pleasure in him if we v/ere with him,
without something of likeness to him.

Holiness fits us for communion with God.

(6.) We can have no evidence of our election and adoption without it.
Conformity to God in purity is the fruit of electing love : Eph. i. 4, * He
hath chosen us that we should be holy.' The goodness of the fruit evi-
denceth the nature of the root. This is the seal that assures us the patent
is the authentic grant of the prince. Whatsoever is holy speaks itself to be
from God, and whosoever is holy speaks himself to belong to God. This
is the only evidence that we are ' born of God,' 1 John ii. 29. The sub-
duing our souls to him, the forming us into a resemblance to himself, is a
more certain sign we belong to him, than if we had with Isaiah seen his
glory in the vision with all his train of angels about him. Tliis justifies us
to be the seed of God, when he hath as it were taken a slip from his own
purity, and engrafted it in our spirits. He can never own us for his children
without his mark, the stamp of holiness. The devil's stamp is none of
God's badge. Our spiritual extraction from him is but pretended, unless
we do things worthy of so illustrious a birth, and becoming the honour of so
great a Father. What evidence can we else have of any child-like love to
God, since the proper act of love is to imitate the object of our afieciions ?

And that we may be in some measure like to God in this excellent per-
fection,

[1.] Let us be often viewing and ruminating on the holiness of God,
especially as discovered in Christ. It is by a believing meditation on him
that we are ' changed into the same image,' 2 Cor. iii. 18. We can think
often of nothing that is excellent in the world but it draws our faculties to
some kind of suitable operation ; and why should not such an excellent idea

272 charnock's works. [Exod. XV. 11.

of the holiness of God in Christ perfect our understandings, and awaken all
the powers of our souls to be formed to actions worthy of him ? A painter,
employed in the limning some excellent piece, has not only his pattern before
his eyes, but his eye frequently upon the pattern, to possess his fancy to
draw forth an exact resemblance. He that would express the image of God
must imprint upon his mind the purity of his nature, cherish it in his
thoughts, that the excellent beauty of it may pass from his understanding to
his affections, and from his affections to his practice. How can we arise to
a conformity to God in Christ, whose most holy nature we seldom glance
upon, and more rarely sink our souls into the depths of it by meditation !
Be frequent in the meditation of the holiness of God.

[2.] Let us often exercise ourselves in acts of love to God, because of this
perfection. The more adoring thoughts we have of God, the more delight-
fully we shall aspire to, and more ravishingly catch after, anything that may
promote the more full draught of his divine image in our hearts. What we
intensely affect, we desire to be as near as we can, and to be that very thing
rather than ourselves. All imitations of others arise from an intense love
to their persons or excellency. AVhen the soul is ravished with this perfec-
tion of God, it will desire to be united with it, to have it drawn in it, more
than to have its own being continued to it. It will desire and delight in its
own being, in order to this heavenly and spiritual work. The impres-
sions of the nature of God upon it, and the imitations of the nature of
God by it, will be more desirable than any natural perfection whatsoever.
The will in loving is rendered like the object beloved, is turned into its
nature,* and imbibes its qualities. The soul by loving God will find itself
more and more transformed into the divine image, whereas slighted ensamples
are never thought worthy of imitation.

[3.] Let us make God our end. Every man's mind forms itself to a like-
ness to that which it makes its chief end. An earthly soul is as drossy as the
earth he gapes for ; an ambitious soul is as elevated as the honour he reaches
at ; the same characters that are upon the thing aimed at, will be imprinted
upon the spirit of him that aims at it. When God and his glory are made
our end, we shall find a silent likeness pass in upon us ; the beauty of God
will by degrees enter upon our souls.

[4.j In every deliberate action, let us reflect upon the divine purity as a
pattern. Let us examine whether anything we are prompted unto, bear an
impression of God upon it, whether it looks like a thing that God himself
•would do in that case, were he in our natures and in our circumstances.
See whether it hath the livery of God upon it, how congi-uous it is to his
nature ; whether, and in what manner, the holiness of God can be glorified
thereby ; and let us be industrious in all this : for can such an imitation be
easy which is resisted by the constant assaults of the flesh, which is dis-
couraged by our ignorance, and depressed by our faint and languishing
desires after it ? Oh, happy we, if there were such a heart in us !

4. A fourth exhortation. If holiness be a perfection belonging to the
nature of God, then, where there is some weak conformity to the holiness
of God, let us labour to gi'ow up in it, and breathe after fuller measures of it.
The more likeness we have to him, the more love we shall have from him.
Communion will be suitable to our imitation, his love to himself in his
essence will cast out beams of love to himself in his image. If God loves
holiness in a lower measure, much more will he love it in a higher degree,
because then his image is more illustrious and beautiful, and comes nearer
to the lively lineaments of his own infinite purity. Perfection in anything
* Amor naturam induit et mores imbibit rei amatee.

ExoD. XV. 11.] god's holiness. 273

is more lovely and amiable than imperfection in any state, and the nearer
anything arrives to perfection, the further are those things separated from it
■which might cool an affection to it. An increase in holiness is attended with
a manifestation of his love : John xiv. 21, ' He that hath my commandments
and keeps them, he it is that loves me, and he shall be loved of my Father,
and I will love him, and I will manifest myself to him.' It is a testimony
of love to God, and God will not be behind hand with the creature in kind-
ness ; he loves a holy man for some resemblance to him in his nature, but
when there is an abounding in sanctified dispositions suitable to it, there is an
increase of favour ; the more we resemble the original, the more shall we
enjoy the blessedness of that original ; as any partake more of the divine
likeness, they partake more of the divine happiness.

5. Exhortation. Let us carry ourselves holily in a spiritual manner in
all our religious approaches to God : Ps. xciii. 5, ' Holiness becomes thy
house, 0 Lord, for ever.' This attribute should work in us a deep and reve-
rential respect to God. This is the reason rendered why we should ' wor-
ship at his footstool,' in the lowest posture of humility, prostrate before him,
because ' he is holy,' Ps. xcix. 5. Shoes must be put ofi" from our feet,
Exod. iii. 5, that is, lusts from our affections, everything that our souls are
clogged and bemired with, as the shoe is with dirt. He is not willing we
should ofier to him an impure soul, mired hearts, rotten carcasses, putrefied
in vice, rotten in iniquity. Our services are to be as free from profaneness
as the sacrifices of the law were to be free from sickliness or any blemish.
Whatsoever is contrary to his purity is abhorred by him, and unlovely in
his sight, and can meet with no other success at his hands, but a disdainful
turning away both of his eye and ear, Isa. i. 15. Since he is an immense
purity, he will reject from his presence, and from having any communion
with him, all that which is not conformable to him ; as light chases away
the darkness of the night, and will not mix with it. If we ' stretch out our
hands towards him,' we must ' put iniquity far away from us,' Job xi. 13, 14 ;
the fruits of all service will else drop oflf to nothing. ' Then shall the ofiering
of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant to the Lord.' When ? When the heart
is purged by Christ ' sitting as a purifier of silver,' Mai. iii. 3, 4. Not all the
incense of the Indies yield him so sweet a savour, as one spiritual act of wor-
ship from a heart estranged from the vileness of the world, and ravished with
an afi'ection to, and a desire of imitating, the purity of his nature.

6. Exhortation. Let us address for holiness to God the fountain of it.
As he is the author of bodily life in the creature, so he is the author of his
own life, the life of God in the soul. By his holiness he makes men holy,
as the sun by his light enlightens the air. He is not only the holy One,
but our holy One, Isa. xliii. 15 ' The Lord that sanctifies us,' Lev. xx. 8.
As he hath mercy to pardon us, so he hath holiness to purify us, the excel-
lency of being a sun to comfort us, and a shield to protect us, ' giving grace
and glory,' Ps. Ixxxiv. 11 : grace whereby we may have communion with
him to our comfort, and strength against our spiritual enemies for our defence ;
grace as our preparatory to glory, and grace growing up till it ripen in glory.
He only can mould us into a divine frame. The great original can only
derive the excellency of his own nature to us. We are too low, too lame to
lift up ourselves to it ; too much in love with our own deformity, to admit
of this beauty without a heavenly power inclining our desires for it, our
afiections to it, our willingness to be partakers of it. He can as soon set
the beauty of holiness in a deformed heart, as the beauty of harmony in a
confused mass when he made the world. He can as soon cause the light of
purity to rise out of the darkness of corruption, as frame glorious spirits out

VOL. II. s

274 chaknock's works. [Exod. XY. 11.

of the insufficiency of nothing. His beauty doth not decay, he hath as much
in himself now as he had in his eternity : he is as ready to impart it as he
was at the creation ; only we must wait upon him for it, and be content to
have it by small measures and degrees. There is no fear of our sanctifica-
tion, if we come to him as a God of holiness, since he is a God of peace,
and the breach made by Adam is repaired by Christ : 1 Thess. v. 23, ' And
the very God of peace sanctify you wholly,' &c. He restores the sanctifying
Spirit which was withdrawn by the fall, as he is a God pacified, and his
holiness righted by the Redeemer. The beauty of it appears in its smiles
upon a man in Christ, and is as ready to impart itself to the reconciled
creature, as before justice was to punish the rebellious one. He loves
to send forth the streams of this perfection into created channels, more
than any else. He did not design the making the creature so powerful as he
might, because power is not such an excellency in its own nature, but as it
is conducted and managed by some other excellency. Power is indifferent,
and may be used well or ill, according as the possessor of it is righteous or
unrighteous. God makes not the creature so powerful as he might, but he
delights to make the creature that waits upon him as holy as it can be, begin-
ning it in this world, and ripening it in the other. It is from him we must
expect it, and from him that we must beg it, and draw arguments from the
holiness of his nature to move him to work holiness in our spirits. We can-
not have a stronger plea. Purity is the favourite of his own nature, and
delights itself in the resemblances of it in the creature. Let us also go to
God, to preserve what he hath already wrought and imparted. As we can-
not attain it, so we cannot maintain it without him. God gave it Adam,
and he lost it : when God gives it us, we shall lose it without his influenc-
ing and preserving grace. The channel will be without a stream, if the
fountain do not bubble it forth ; and the streams will vanish, if the fountain
doth not constantly supply them. Let us apply ourselves to him for holi-
ness, as he is a God ' glorious in holiness.' By this we honour God, and
advantage ourselves.

A DISCOURSE UPOI^ THE GOODNESS Of GOD.

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good ? There is none good
hut one, that is, God. — Make X. 18.

The words are part of a reply of our Saviour to the young man's petition
to him. A certain person came in haste, running, as being eager for satis-
faction, to entreat his directions, what he should do to inherit everlasting life.
The person is described only in general : ver. 17, ' There came one,' a certain
man; but Luke describes him by his dignity: Luke xviii. 18, 'A certain
ruler,' one of authority among the Jews. He desires of him an answer to a
legal question, what he should do ; or as Matthew hath it, chap. xix. 16,
' What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? ' He imagined
everlasting felicity was to be purchased by the works of the law; he had
not the least sentiments of faith, Christ's answer implies there was no hopes
of the happiness of another world by the works of the law, unless they were
perfect and answerable to every divine precept. He doth not seem to have
any ill or hypocritical intent in his address to Christ ; not to tempt him, but
to be instructed by him. He seems to come with an ardent desire to be satis-
fied in his demand ; he performed a solemn act of respect to him, ' he kneeled
to him,' yowTTiTrisag, prostrated himself upon the ground. Besides, Christ
is said, verse 21, to ' love him,' which had been inconsistent with the know-
ledge Christ had of the hearts and thoughts of men, and the abhorrence he
had of hypocrites, had he been only a counterfeit in this question.

But the first reply Christ makes to him respects the title of ' good Master,'
which this ruler gave him in his salutation.

1. Some think that Christ hereby would draw him to an acknowledgment
of him as God : You acknowledge me good, how come you to salute me with
80 great a title, since you do not afford it to your greatest doctors ? Light-
foot in loc. observes, that the title of PMhhi hone is not in all the Talmud.
You must own me to be God, since you own me to be good, goodness being
a title only due and properly belonging to the Supreme Being.

If you take me for a common man, with what conscience can you salute
me in a manner proper to God, since no man is good, no, not one, but the
heart of man is evil continually ? The Arians used this place to back their •
denying the deity of Christ ; because, say they, he did not acknowledge him-
self good, therefore he did not acknowledge himself God. But he doth not
here deny his deity, but reproves him for calling him good, when he had not

276 charnock's works, [Mark X. 18.

yet confessed him to be more than a man.* You behold my flesh, but you
consider not the fulness of my deity; if you account me good, account me
God, and imagine me not to be a simple and a mere man.f He disowns
not his own deity, but allures the young man to a confession of it. Why
callest thou me good, since thou dost not discover any apprehensions of my
being more than a man ? Though thou comest with a greater esteem to me
than is commonly entertained of the doctors of the chair, why dost thou own
me to be good, unless thou own me to God ? If Christ had denied himself
in this speech to be good, he had rather entertained this person with a frown
and sharp reproof for giving him a title due to God alone, than have received
him with that courtesy and complaisance as he did.]; Had he said there is
none good but the Father, he had excluded himself; but in saying, there is
none good but God, he comprehends himself.

2. Others say that Christ had no intention to draw him to an acknowledg-
ment of his Deity, but only asserts his divine authority or mission from God ;
for which interpretation Maldonat calls Calvin an Arianiser.§ He doth not
here assert the essence of his deity, but the authority of his doctrine ; as if
he should have said. You do without ground give me the title of good, unless
you believe I have a divine commission for what I declare and act. Many
do think me an impostor, an enemy of God, and a friend to devils ; you
must firmly believe that I am not so as your rulers report me, but that I am
sent of God, and authorised by him ; you cannot else give me the title of
good, but of wicked. And the reason they give for this interpretation is,
because it is a question whether any of the apostles understood him at this
time to be God, which seems to have no great strength in it, since not only
the devil had publicly owned him to be the holy One of God, Luke iv. 34,
but John the Baptist had borne record that he was the Son of God, John
i. 32, 34, and before this time Peter had confessed him openly, in the hear-
ing of the rest of the disciples, that he was ' the Christ, the Son of the living
God,' Mat. xvi. 16. But I think Paraeus his interpretation is best, which
takes in both those : Either you are serious or deceitful in this address ; if
you are serious, why do you call me good, and make bold to fix so great a
title upon one you have no higher thoughts of than of a mere man ? Christ
takes occasion from hence to assert God to be the only and sovereignly good :
'There is none good but God.' || God only hath the honour of absolute
goodness, and none but God merits the name of good. A heathen could
say much after the same manner : ' All other things are far from the nature
of good. Call none else good but God, for this would be a profane error.
Other things are only good in opinion, but have not the true substance of
goodness. He is good in a more excellent way than any creature can be
denominated good.' IT

(1.) God is only originally good of himself. All created goodness is a
rivulet from this fountain, but divine goodness hath no spring; God depends
upon no other for his goodness, he hath it in and of himself. Man hath
no goodness from himself, God hath no goodness from without himself; his
goodness is no more derived from another than his being. If he were good
by any external thing, that thing must be in being before him, or after him :
if before him, he was not then himself from eternity; if after him, he was
not good in himself from eternity. The end of his creating things, then,
was not to confer a goodness upon his creatures, but to partake of a good-
ness from his creatures. God is good by and in himself, since all things are

* Erasm. in loc. § Calvin in he.

t Augustin. II Trismegist. Psemond, cap. 2.

X Hensius in Mat. *| Eugubin, de Peren. Philos. lib. v. cap. 9.

Maek X. 18.] god's goodness. 277

only good by him, and all that goodness which is in creatures is hut the breath-
ing of his own goodness upon them. They have all their loveliness from
the same hand they have their being from. Though by creation God was
declared good, yet he was not made good by any, or by all the creatures.
He partakes of none, but all things partake of him. He is so good that he
gives all, and receives nothing ; only good, because nothing is good but by
him ; nothing hath a goodness but from him.
. (2.) God only is infinitely good.

A boundless goodness that knows no limits, a goodness as infinite as his
essence, not only good, but best ; not only good, but goodness itself, the
supreme unconceivable goodness. All things else are but little particles of
God, small sparks from this immense flame, sips of goodness to this foun-
tain. Nothing that is good by his influence can equal him, who is good by
himself ; derived goodness can never equal primitive goodness. Divine good-
ness communicates itself to a vast number of creatures in various degrees ;
to angels, glorified spirits, men on earth, to every creature, and when it
hath communicated all that the present world is capable of, there is still
less displaj-ed than left to enrich another world. All possible creatures are
not capable of exhausting the wealth, the treasures, that divine bounty is
filled with.

(3.) God is only perfectly good, because only infinitely good.

He is good without indigence, because he hath the whole nature of good-
ness, not only some beams, that may admit of increase of degree. As in
him is the whole nature of entity, so in him is the whole nature of excel-
lency. As nothing hath an absolute perfect being but God, so nothing hath
an absolutely perfect goodness but God. As the sun hath a perfection of
heat in it, but what is warmed by the sun is but imperfectly hot, and
equals not the sun in that perfection of heat wherewith it is naturally
endued. The goodness of God is the measure and rule of goodness in every-
thing else.

(4.) God only is immutably good.

Other things may be perpetually good by supernatural power, but not
immutably good in their own nature. Other things are not so good, but
they may be bad ; God is so good that he cannot be bad. It was the
speech of a philosopher,* that it was a hard thing to find a good man, yea,
impossible, but though it were possible to find a good man, he would be
good but for some moment, or a short time ; for though he should be good
at this instant, it was above the nature of man to continue in a habit of
goodness, without going awry and warping. But ' the goodness of God
endureth for ever,' Ps. Hi. 1. God always glitters in goodness, as the sun,
which the heathens called the visible image of the divinity, doth with light.
There is not such a perpetual light in the sun as there is a fulness of good-
ness in God ; ' no variableness' in him, as he is ' the Father of lights,'
James ii. 17.

Before I come to the doctrine, that is the chief scope of the words, some
remarks may be made upon the young man's question and carriage, ' What
must I do to inherit eternal life ? '

1. The opinion of gaining eternal life by the outward observation of the
law will appear very unsatisfactory to an inquisitive conscience. This ruler
affirmed, and certainly did confidently believe, that he had fulfilled the law :
' All this have I observed from my youth,' ver. 20, yet he had not any full
satisfaction in his own conscience ; his heart misgave, and started upon
Bome sentiments in him, that something else was required, and what he
* Eugubin. peren. Philos., lib. v. cap. ix. p. 97. col. 1.

278 CKAnxocK's works. [Mark X. 18.

had done might he too weak, too short to shoot heaven's lock for him. And
to that purpose he comes to Christ, to receive instructions for the piecing up
whatsoever was defective. "Whosoever will consider the nature of Grod, and
the relation of a creature, cannot with reason think that eternal life was of
itself due from God as a recompenceto Adam, had he persisted in a state of
innocence. Who can think so great a reward due for having performed
that which a creature in that relation was obliged to do ? Can any man
think another obliged to convey an inheritance of £1000 per annum upon
his payment of a few farthings, unless any compact appears to support such
a conceit ? And if it were not to be expected in the integrity of nature, but
only from the goodness of God, how can it be expected since the revolt of
man, and the universal deluge of natural corruption ! God owes nothing to
the holiest creature ; what he gives is a present from his bounty, not the
reward of the creature's merit. And the apostle defies all creatures, from
the greatest to the least, from the tallest angel to the lowest shrub, to bring
out any one creature that hath first given to God : Eom. xi. 35, ' Who hath
first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again ? ' The duty of
the creature, and God's gift of eternal life, is not a bargain and sale.

God gives to the creature, he doth not properly repay ; for he that repays
hath received something of an equal value and worth before. When God
crowns angels and men, he bestows upon them purely what is his own, not
what is theirs by merit and natural obligation ; though indeed what God
gives by virtue of a promise made before is upon the performance of the
condition due by gracious obligation. God was not indebted to man in
innocence, but every man's conscience may now mind him that he is not
upon the same level as in the state of integi-ity ; and that he cannot expect
anything from God, as the salary of his merit, but the free gift of divine
liberality. Man is obliged to the practice of what is good, both from the
excellency of the divine precepts, and the duty he owes to God, and cannot
without some declaration from God hope for any other reward than the
satisfaction of having well acquitted himself.*

2. It is the disease of human nature, since its corruption, to hope for
eternal life by the tenor of the covenant of works.

Though this ruler's conscience was not thoroughly satisfied with what he
had done, but imagined he might for all that fall short of eternal life, yet
he still hugs the imagination of obtaining it by doing: ver. 17, ' What shall
I do that I may inherit eternal life ? ' This is natural to corrupted man.
Cain thought to be accepted for the sake of his sacrifice, and when he found
his mistake he was so weary of seeking happiness by doing, that he would
court misery by murdering. All men set too high a value upon their own
services. Sinful creatures would fain make God a debtor to them, and be
purchasers of felicity ; they would not have it conveyed to them by God's
sovereign bounty, but by an obligation of justice upon the value of their
works. The heathens thought God would treat men according to the merit
of their services, and it is no wonder they should have this sentiment, when
the Jews, educated by God in a wiser school, were wedded to that notion.
The Pharisees were highly fond of it, it was the only argument they used in
prayer for divine blessing ; you have one of them boasting of his frequency
in fasting, and his exactness in paying his tithes, Luke xviii. 12, as if God
had been beholding to him, and could not without manifest wrong deny him
his demand. And Paul confesseth it to be his o-vsn sentiment before his
conversion, he accounted this righteousnes of the law gain to him, Philip,
iii. 7 ; he thought by this to make his market with God. The whole nation
* Amyraut, Morale.

Makk X. 18.] god's goodness. 279

of the Jews affected it : Kom. x. 3, ' Going about to establish their own
righteousness,' ' compassing sea and land ' to make out a righteousness of
their own, as the Pharisees did to make proselytes.

The papists follow their steps, and dispute for justification by the merit
of works, and find out another key of works of supererogation, to unlock hea-
ven's gate, than what ever the Scripture informed us of. It is from hence
also that men are so ready to make faith as a work the cause of our justifi-
cation. Man foolishly thinks he hath enough to set up himself after he hath
proved bankrupt, and lost all his estate. This imagination is born with us, .
and the best Christians may find some sparks of it in themselves, when
there are springings up of joy in their hearts upon the more close perform-
ance of one duty than of another, as if they had wiped off their scores, and
given God a satisfaction for their former neglects. ' We have forsaken all,
and followed thee,' was the boast of his disciples. 'What shall we have,
therefore ? ' was a branch of this root. Mat. xix. 27. Eternal life is a gift,
not by any obligation of right, but an abundance of goodness ; it is owing
not to the dignity of our works, but the magnificent bounty of the divine
nature, and must be sued for by the title of God's promise, not by the title
of the creature's services. We may observe,

3. How insufficient are some assents to divine truth, and some expres-
sions of affection to Christ, without the practice of Christian precepts. This
man addressed to Christ with a profound respect, acknowledging him more
than an ordinary person, with a more reverential carriage than we read any
of his disciples paid to him in the days of his flesh ; he fell down at his
feet, kissed his knees, as the custom was when they would testify the great
respect they had to any eminent person, especially to their Rabbins. All
this some think to be included in the word yovvffirrjgag, ver. 17. He seems
to acknowledge him the Messiah by giving him the title of ffood, a title they
did not give to their doctors of the chair ;* he breathes out his opinion that
he was able to instruct him beyond the ability of the law ; he came with a
more than ordinary affection to him, and expectation of advantage from him,
evident by his departing sad when his expectations were frustrated by his
own perversity ; it was a sign he had a high esteem of him, from whom he
could not part without marks of his grief. What was the cause of his refus-
ing the instructions he pretended such an affection to receive ? He had
possessions in the world. How soon do a few drops of worldly advantage
quench the first sparks of an ill-grounded love to Christ ! How vain is a
complimental and cringing devotion, without a supreme preference of God,
and valuation of Christ above every outward allurement ? We may observe
this,

4. We should never admit anything to be ascribed to us which is proper
to God. ' Why callest thou me good ? There is none good but one, that is
God.' If you do not acknowledge me God, ascribe not to me the title of
good. It takes off all those titles which fawning flatterers give to men :
Mighty, Invincible to princes, Holiness to the pope. We call one another
good, without considering how evil; and wise, without considering how
foolish ; mighty, without considering how weak ; and knowing, without con-
sidering how ignorant. No man but hath more of wickedness than goodness,
of ignorance than knowledge, of weakness than strength. God is a jealous
God of his own honour, he will not have the creature share with him in his
royal titles. It is a part of idolatry to give men the titles which are due to
God ; a kind of a worship of the creature together with the Creator. Worms
will not stand out, but assault Herod in his purple when he usurps the pre-

* Lightfoot in loc.

280 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

rogative of God, and prove stiff and invincible vindicators of their Creator's
honour when summoned to arms by the Creator's word, Acts xii. 22, 23.

The observation which I intend to prosecute is this,

Voct. Pure and perfect goodness is only the royal prerogative of God ;
goodness is a choice perfection of the divine nature.

This is the true and genuine character of God. He is good, he is good-
ness, good in himself, good in his essence, good in the highest degree, pos-
sessing whatsoever is comely, excellent, desirable ; the highest good, because
the first good ; whatsoever is perfect goodness is God, whatsoever is truly
goodness in any creature is a resemblance of God.* All the names of God
are comprehended in this one of good. All gifts, all variety of goodness,
are contained in him as one common good. He is the efficient cause of all
good by an overflowing goodness of his nature. He refers all things to
himself as the end for the representation of his own goodness. ' Truly God
is good,' Ps. Ixxiii. 1. Certainly, it is an undoubted truth; it is written in
his works of nature, and his acts of grace : Exod. xxxiv. 6, ' He is abundant
in goodness.'

And everything is a memorial, not of some few sparks, but of his ' great
goodness,' Ps. cxlv. 7. This is often celebrated in the Psalms, and men
invited more than once to sing forth the praises of it, Ps. cvii. 8, 15, 21, 31.
It may better be admired than sufficiently spoken of, or thought of, as it
merits. It is discovered in all his works, as the goodness of a tree in all
its fruits ; it is easy to be seen, and more pleasant to be contemplated. In
general,

1. All nations in the world have acknowledged God good : to 'Ayadhv was
one of the names the Platonists expressed him by, and good and God are
almost the same words in our language. All as readily consented in the
notion of his goodness as in that of his deity. Whatsoever divisions or
disputes there were among them in the other perfections of God, they all
agreed in this without dispute, saith Synesius.t One calls him Venus, in
regard of his loveliness. J Another calls him Eowra, love, as being the band
which ties all things together. No perfection of the divine nature is more
eminently nor more speedily visible in the whole book of the creation than
this. His gi-eatness shines not in any part of it where his goodness doth
not as gloriously glister. Whatsoever is the instrument of his work, as his
power ; whatsoever is the orderer of his work, as his wisdom : yet nothing
can be adored as the motive of his work but the goodness of his nature.
This only could induce him to resolve to create. His wisdom then steps in
to dispose the methods of what he resolved, and his power follows to execute
what his wisdom hath disposed, and his goodness designed. His power in
■making, and his wisdom in ordering, are subservient to his goodness ; and
this goodness, which is the end of the creation, is as visible to the eyes of
men, as legible to the understanding of men, as his power in forming them,
and his wisdom in tuning them. And as the book of creation, so the records
of his government must needs acquaint them with a great part of it, when
they have often beheld him stretching out his hand to supply the indigent,
reheve the oppressed, and punish the oppressors, and give them in their
distresses what might ' fill their, hearts with food and gladness.' It is this
the apostle means by his Godhead, Kom. i. 20, 21, which he links with his
eternity and power, as clearly seen in the things that are made, as in a pure
glass. ' For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal
power and Godhead.' The Godhead, which comprehends the whole nature

* Ficin. in Dionys. de divin. Dom. cap. 611. j Enjfedccles. J Eesiod.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 281

of God as discoverable to his creatures, was not known, yea, was impossible
to be known, by the works of creation. There had been nothing then re-
served to be manifested in Christ. But his goodness, which is properly
meant there by his Godhead, was as clearly visible as his power. The
apostle upbraids them with their unthankfulness, and argues their inexcus-
ableuess, because the arm of his power in creation made no due impressions
of fear upon their spirits, nor the beams of his goodness wrought in them
sufficient sentiments of gratitude. Their not glorifying God was a contempt
of the former, and their not being thankful was a slight of the latter. God
is the object of honour as he is powerful, and the object of thankfulness
properly as he is bountiful.

All the idolatry of the heathens is a clear testimony of their common sen-
timent of the goodness of God, since the more eminently useful any person
was in some advantageous invention for the benefitof mankind, they thought
he merited a rank in the number of their deities.' The Italians esteemed
Pythagoras a god, because he was ^iXavO^wzora-os ;* to be good and useful
was an approximation to the divine nature ; hence it was, that when the
Lystrians saw a resemblance of the divine goodness in the charitable and
miraculous cure of one of their crippled citizens, presently they mistook
Paul and Barnabas for gods, and inferred from thence their right to divine
worship, inquiring into nothing else but the visible character of their good-
ness and usefulness, to capacitate them for the honour of a sacrifice. Acts
xiv. 8-11. Hence it was that they adored those creatures that were a com-
mon benefit, as the sun and moon, which must be founded upon a pre-existent
notion not only of the being, but of the bounty and goodness of God, which
was naturally implanted in them, and legible in all God's works, and the
more beneficial anything was to them, and the more sensible advantages they
received from it, the higher station they gave it in the rank of their idols,
and bestowed upon it a more solemn worship. An absurd mistake, to think
everything that was sensibly good to them to be God, clothing himself in
such a form to be adored by them ; and upon this account the Egyptians
worshipped God under the figure of an ox, and the East Indians in some
parts of their country deify a heifer, intimating the goodness of God as their
nourisher and preserver in giving them corn, whereof the ox is an instrument
in serving for ploughing and preparing the ground.

2. The notion of goodness is inseparable from the notion of a God.

We cannot own the existence of God, but v/e must confess also the good-
ness of his nature ; hence the apostle gives to his goodness the title of his
Godhead, as if goodness and Godhead were convertible terms. Rom. i.
20. As it is indissolubly linked with the being of a deity, so it cannot be
severed from the notion of it ; we as soon undeify him by denying him good,
as by denying him great ; optimus, maximiis, the best, greatest, was the name
whereby the Piomans entitled him. His nature is as good as it is majestic ;
so doth the psalmist join them : ' I will declare thy greatness ; they shall
abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness,' Ps. cxlv. 6, 7. They
considered his goodnes before his greatness, in putting optimus before waxi-
mus. Greatness without sweetness is an unruly and afiVighting monster in
the world, like a vast turbulent sea casting out mire and dirt. Goodness is
the brightness and loveliness of our majestical Creator. To fancy a God
without it, is to fancy a miserable, scanty, narrow-hearted, savage God, and
80 an unlovely and horrible being; for he is not a God that is not good, he
is not a God that is not the highest good. Infinite goodness is more neces-
sary to, and more straitly joined with, an infinite Deity, than infinite power,
♦ lambiych. Vit. Pythag. lib. i. col. 6, p. 43.

282 charnock's WORKS, [Mark X. 18.

and infinite 'wisdom ; we cannot conceive him God, unless we conceive him
the highest good, having nothing superior to himself in goodness, as he hath
nothing superior to himself in excellency and perfection. No man can
possibly form a notion of God in his mind, and yet form a notion of some-
thing better than God, for whoever thinks anything better than God,
fancieth a God with some defect. By how much the better he thinks that
thing to be, by so much the more imperfect he makes God in his thoughts.
This notion of the goodness of God was so natural, that some philosophers
and others, being startled at the evil they saw in the world, fancied besides
a good God, an evil principle, the author of all punishments in the world.
This was ridiculous, for those two must be of equal power, or one inferior
to the other ; if equal, the good could do nothing, but the evil one would
restrain him, and the evil one could do nothing, but the good one would
contradict him, so they would be always contending and never conquering ;
if one were inferior to the other, then there would be nothing but what that
superior ordered. Good, if the good one were superior, and nothing but
evil, if the bad one were superior. In the prosecution of this let us see,

I. What this goodness is.

II. Some propositions concerning the nature of it.

III. That God is good.

IV. The manifestation of it in creation, providence, and redemption.

V. The use.

I. What this goodness is.

There is a goodness of being, which is the natural perfection of a thing ;
there is the goodness of will, which is the holiness and righteousness of a
person ; there is the goodness of the hand, which we call liberality or
beneficence, a doing good to others.

1. We mean by this, the goodness of his essence, or the perfection of his
nature. God is thus good, because his nature is infinitely perfect, he hath
all things requisite to the completing of a most perfect and sovereign
being. All good meets in his essence, as all water meets in the ocean.
Under this notion all the attributes of God, which are requisite to so illus-
trious a being, are comprehended. All things that are have a goodness of
being in them, derived to them by the power of God as they are creatures.
So the devil is good, as he is a creature of God's making ; he hath a natural
goodness, but not a moral goodness. When he fell from God, he retained
his natural goodness as a creature, because he did not cease to be, he was
not reduced to that nothing from whence he was drawn ; but he ceased to be
morally good, being stripped of his righteousness by his apostasy. As a
creature, he was God's work ; as a creature, he remains still God's work ; and
therefore, as a creature, remains still good in regard of his created being.
The more of being anything hath, the more of this sort of natural goodness
it hath ; and so the devil hath more of this natural goodness than men have,
because he hath more marks of the excellency of God upon him, in regard
of the greatness of his knowledge, and the extent of his power, the large-
ness of his capacity, and the acuteness of his understanding, which are
natural perfections belonging to the nature of an angel, though he hath lost
his moral perfections. God is sovereignly and infinitely good in this sort of
goodness. He is unsearchably perfect, Job. xi. 7 ; nothing is wanting to
his essence that is necessary to the perfection of it ; yet this is not that
the Scripture expresseth under the term of goodness, but a perfection of
God's nature as related to us, and which he poureth forth upon all his crea-
tures, as goodness which flows from this natural perfection of the Deity.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 283

2. Nor is if the same with the blessedness of God, but something flowing
from his blessedness. Were he not first infinitely blessed and full in him-
self, he could not be infinitelj' good and diffusive to us ; had he not an
infinite abundance in his own nature, he could not be overflowing to his
creatures.

Had not the sun a fulness of light in itself, and the sea a vastness of water,
the one could not enrich the world with its beams, nor the other fill every
creek with its waters.

3. Nor is it the same with the holiness of God. The holiness of God is
the rectitude of his nature, whereby he is pure, and without spot in himself.
The goodness of God is the efilux of his will, whereby he is beneficial to
his creatures. The holiness of God is manifest in his rational creatures,
but the goodness of God extends to all the works of his hands. His holi-
ness beams most in his law, his goodness reacheth to everything that had
a being from him : Ps. cxlv. 9, ' The Lord is good to all.' And though he
be said in the same psalm, verse 17, to be ' holy in all his works,' it is to
be understood of his bounty, bountiful in all his works, the Hebrew word
signifying both holy and hberal, and the margin of the Bible reads it ' mer-
ciful ' or ' bountiful.'

4. Nor is this goodness of God the same with the mercy of God. Good-
ness extends to more objects than mercy, goodness stretcheth itself out to
all the works of his hands ; mercy extends only to a miserable object, for it
is joined with a sentiment of pity, occasioned by the calamity of another.
The mercy of God is exercised about those that merit punishment, the good-
ness of God is exercised upon objects that have not merited anything con-
trary to the acts of his bounty. Creation is an act of goodness, not of
mercy : providence in governing some part of the world, is an act of goodness,
not of mercy.* The heavens, saith Austin, need the goodness of God to
govern them, but not the mercy of God to relieve them ; the earth is full
of the misery of man, and the compassions of God ; but the heavens need
not the mercy of God to pity them, because they are not miserable, though
they need the goodness and power of God to sustain them, because, as crea-
tures, they are impotent without him. God's goodness extends to the angels,
that kept their standing, and to man in innocence, who in that state stood
not in need of mercy. Goodness and mercy are distinct, though mercy be
a branch of goodness ; there may be a manifestation of goodness, though
none of mercy. Some think Christ had been incarnate, had not man fallen ;
had it been so, there had been a manifestation of goodness to our nature, but
not of mercy, because sin had not made our nature miserable. The devils
are monuments of God's creating goodness, but not of his pardoning com-
passions. The grace of God respects the rational creature, mercy the
miserable creature, goodness all his creatures, brutes, and the senseless
plants, as well as reasonable man.

5. By goodness is meant the bounty of God. This is the notion of good-
ness in the world ; when we say a good man, we mean either a holy man
in his life, or a charitable and liberal man in the management of his goods.
A righteous man and a good man are distinguished : Eom. v. 7, ' For
scarcely for a rifjhteons man will one die ; yet for a ffood man one would even
dare to die.' For an innocent man, one as innocent of the crime as himself
would scarce venture his life ; but for a good man, a liberal tender-hearted
man, that had been a common good in the place where he lived, or had done
another as great a benefit as life itself amounts to, a man out of gratitude
might dare to die. The goodness of God is his inclination to deal well and

* Lombard, lib. iv. distinct 46, p. 286.

284 charnock's works. [Mark X, 18.

bountifully with his creatures.* It is that whereby he wills there should be
something besides himself for his own glory. God is good in himself, and
to himself, i.e. highly amiable to himself; and therefore some define it a
perfection of God, whereby he loves himself and his own excellency ; but as
it stands in relation to his creatures, it is that perfection of God, whereby
he delights in his works, and is beneficial to them. God is the highest
goodness, because he doth not act for his own profit, but for his creatures'
welfare, and the manifestation of his own goodness. He sends out his
beams, without receiving any addition to himself, or substantial advantage
from his creatures. It is from this perfection that he loves whatsoever is
good, and that is, whatsoever he hath made, for ' every creature of God
is good,' 1 Tim. iv. 4. Every creature hath some communications from him,
which cannot ba without some affection to them ; every creature hath a foot-
step of divine goodness upon it : God therefore loves that goodness in the
creature, else he would not love himself. God hates no creature ; no, not
the devils and damned, as creatures ; he is not an enemy to them, as they
are the works of his hands. f He is properly an enemy, that doth simply
and absolutely wish evil to another ; but God doth not absolutely wish evil
to the damned ; that justice that he inflicts upon them, the deserved punish-
ment of their sin, is part of his goodness (as shall afterward be shewn).

This is the most pleasant perfection of the divine nature. His creating
power amazes us, his conducting wisdom astonisheth us, his goodness, as
furnishing us with all conveniencies, delights us, and renders both his
amazing power and astonishing wisdom delightful to us.

As the sun, by efiecting things, is an emblem of God's power, by disco-
vering things to us, is an emblem of his wisdom, but by refreshing and
comforting us, is an emblem of his goodness ; and without this refreshing
virtue it communicates to us, we should take no pleasure in the creatures it
produceth, nor in the beauties it discovers. As God is great and powerful,
he is the object of our understanding ; but as good and bountiful, he is the
object of our love and desire.

6. The goodness of God comprehends all his attributes. All the acts of
God are nothing else but the effluxes of his goodness, distinguished by several
names, according to the objects it is exercised about. As the sea, though
it be one mass of water, yet we distinguish it by several names, according
to the shores it washeth and beats upon, as the British and German Ocean,
though all be one sea. When Moses longed to see his glory, God tells him,
he would give him a prospect of his goodness : Exod. xxxiii. 19, ' I will make
all my goodness to pass before thee.' His goodness is his glory and God-
head, as much as is delightfully visible to his creatures, and whereby he doth
benefit man. ' I will cause my goodness,' or comeliness, as Calvin renders
it, ' to pass before thee :' What is this but the train of all his lovely perfec-
tions springing from his goodness ? The whole catalogue of mercy, grace,
long-suffering, abundance of truth, Exod. xxxiv. 6, summed up in this one
word. All are streams from this one fountain ; he could be none of this
were he not first good. When it confers happiness without merit, it is
grace ; when it bestows happiness against merit, it is mercy ; when he bears
with provoking rebels, it is long-sufiering ; when he performs his promise, it
is truth ; when it meets with a person to whom it is not obliged, it is grace ;
when he meets with a person in the world, to which he hath obliged himself
by promise, it is truth ; I when it commiserates a distressed person, it is
pity ; when it supplies an indigent person, it is bounty ; when it succours an

* Coccei, Sum. p. 50. t Cajetan, in Secund Secundse, qu. 34. art. 3.

X Herle upon Wisdom, cap. v. p. 41, 42.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodni ss. 285

innocent person, it is righteousness ; and when it pardons a penitent person,
it is mercy, — all summed up in this one name of goodness. And the psalmist
expresseth the same sentiment in the same words : Ps. cxlv. 7-9, ' They
shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of
thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion ; slow to
anger, and of great mercy. The Lord is good to all ; and his tender mercies
are over all his works.' He is first good, and then compassionate. Right-
eousness is often in Scripture taken, not for justice, but charitableness.
This attribute, saith one,-^ is so full of God, that it doth deify all the rest,
and verify the adorableness of him. His wisdom might contrive against us,
his power bear too hard upon us ; one might be too hard for an ignorant,
and the other too mighty for an impotent creature ; his holiness would scare
an impure and guilty creature, but his goodness conducts them all for us,
and makes them all amiable to us. Whatever comeliness they have in the
eye of a creature, whatever comfort they afford to the heart of a creature,
we are obliged for all to his goodness. This puts all the rest upon a delight-
ful exercise, this makes his wisdom design for us, and this makes his power
to act for us. This veils his holiness from aflfrighting us, and this spirits his
mercy to relieve us.f All his acts towards man are but the workmanship of
this. What moved him at first to create the world out of nothing, and erect
so noble a creature as man, endowed with such excellent gifts ? Was it not
his goodness ? What made him separate his Son to be a sacrifice for us,
after we had endeavoured to raze out the first marks of his favour ? Was it
not a strong bubbhng of goodness ? What moves him to reduce a fallen
creature to the due sense of his duty, and at last bring him into an eternal
felicity ? Is it not only his goodness ? This is the captain attribute that
leads the rest to act ; this attends them, and spirits them all in his ways of
acting. This is the complement and perfection of all his works ; had it
not been for this, which set all the rest on work, nothing of his wonders
had been seen in creation, nothing of his compassions had been seen in
redemption.

II. The second thing is, some propositions to explain the nature of this
goodness.

1. He is good by his own essence. God is not only good in his essence,
but good by his essence. The essence of every created thing is good, so the
unerring God pronounced everything which he had made, Gen. i. 31. The
essence of the worst creatures, yea, of the impure and savage devils, is good,
but they are not good per essentiam, for then they could not be bad, mali-
cious, and oppressive. God is good as he is God, and therefore good by
himself, and from himself, not by participation from another. He made
everything good, but none made him good. Since his goodness was not
received from another, he is good by his own nature. He could not receive
it from the things he created ; they are later than he. Since they received
all from him, they could bestow nothing on him, and no God preceded him,
in whose inheritance and treasures of goodness he could be a successor. He
is absolutely his own goodness, he needed none to make him good ; but all
things needed him to be good by him. Creatures are made good by being
made so by him, and cleaving to him. He is good without cleaving to any
goodness without him, and goodness is not a quality in him, but a nature,
not a habit added to his essence, hut his essence itself.| He is not first
God, and then afterwards good ; but he is good as he is God, his essence

* Ingelo, Bentivolio, et Uran, book iv. p. 260, 261.

t Daille, Melange, part ii. p. 704, 705. J Ficini, Epist. lib. xi. epist. 30.

286 charxock's works. [Mark X. 18.

being one and the same, is formally and equally God and good. ' Avrd-
yaSov, good of himself, was one of the names the Platonists gave him. He
is essentially good in his own nature, and not by any outward action which
follows his essence. He is an independent being, and hath nothing of good-
ness or happiness from anything without him, or anything he doth act about.
If he were not good by his essence, he could not be eternally good, he could
not be the first good, he would have something before him, from whence he
derived that goodness wherewith he is possessed ; nor could he be perfectly
good, for he could not be equally good to that from whom he derived his
goodness. No star, no splendid body that derives light from the sun, doth
equal that sun by which it is enlightened.

Hence his goodness must be infinite, and circumscribed by no limits.
The exercise of his goodness may be limited by himself, but his goodness,
the principle, cannot ; for since his essence is infinite, and his goodness is
not distinguished from his essence, it is infinite also. If it were limited, it
were finite : he cannot be bounded by anything without him ; if so, then he
were not God, because he would have something superior to him, to put
bars in his way. If there were anything to fix him, it must be a good or
evil beinw ; good it cannot be, for it is the property of goodness to encourage
goodness, not to bound it ; evil it cannot be, for then it would extinguish
goodness, as well as limit it ; it would not be content with the circumscrib-
ing it without destroying it ; for it is the nature of every contrary to endea-
vour the destruction of its opposite. He is essentially good by his own
essence, therefore good of himself, therefore eternally good, and therefore
abundantly good.

2, God is the prime and chief goodness. Being good j^er se, and by his
own essence, he must needs be the chief goodness, in whom there can be
nothing but good, from whom there can proceed nothing but good, to whom
all good whatsoever must be referred as the final cause of all good. As he
is the chief beiug, so he is the chief good. And as we rise by steps from the
existence of created things, to acknowledge one supreme being, which is
God, so we mount by steps from the consideration of the goodness of
created things, to acknowledge one infinite ocean of sovereign goodness,
whence the streams of created goodness are derived. When we behold things
that partake of goodness from another, we must acquiesce in one that hath
goodness by participation from no other, but originally from himself, and
therefore supremely in himself above all other things ; so that as nothing
greater and more majestic can be imagined, so also nothing better and more
excellent can be conceived than God. Nothing can add to him, or make
him better than he is, nothing can detract from him to make -him worse,
nothing can be added to him, nothing can be severed fi-om him. No created
good can render him more excellent ; no evil from any creature can render
him less excellent : Ps. xvi. 2, our ' goodness extends not to him ;' wicked-
ness may hurt a man, as we are, and our righteousness may profit the son
of man ; but ' if we be righteous, what give we to him, or what receives he
at our hands ?' Job xxxv. 7, 8. As he hath no superior in place above him,
80 beinff chief of all, he cannot be made better by any inferior to him. How
can he be made better by any, that hath from himself all that he hath ? The
goodness of a creature may be changed, but the goodness of the Creator is
immutable. He is always like himself, so good that he cannot be evil, as
he is so blessed, that he cannot be miserable.

Nothing is good but God, because nothing is of itself but God; as all
things being from nothing are nothing in comparison of God, so all things
being from nothing are scanty and evil in comparison of God. If anything

Mark. X. 18.] god's goodness. 237

had been ex Deo, God being the matter of it, it had been as good as God is ;
but since the principle whence all things were drawn was nothing, though
the efficient cause by which they were extracted from nothing was God, they
are as nothing in goodness, and not estimable in comparison of God : Ps.
Ixxiii. 25, ' Whom have I in heaven but thee,' &c. God is all good, every
creature hath a distinct variety of goodness. God distinctly pronounced
every day's work in the creation good. Food communicates the goodness of
its nourishing virtue to our bodies, flowers the goodness of their odours to
our smell, every creature a goodness of comeliness to our sight, plants the
goodness of healing qualities for our care, and all derive from themselves a
goodness of knowledge objectively to our understandings. The sun by one
sort of goodness warms us, metals enrich us, living creatures sustain us,
and delight us by another ; all those have distinct kinds of goodness, which
are eminently summed up in God, and are all but parts of his immense
goodness. It is he that enlightens us by his sun, nourisheth us by bread :
Mat. iv. 4, ' It is not by bread alone that we live, but by the word of God.'
It is all but his own supreme goodness, conveyed to us through those varie-
ties of conduit pipes. God is all good ; other things are good in their kind,
as a good man, a good angel, a good tree, a good plant, but God hath a good
of all kinds eminently in his nature. He is no less all-good, than he is
almighty, and all-knowing ; as the sun contains in it all the light and more
light than is in all the clearest bodies in the world, so doth God contain in him-
self all the good, and more good, than is in the richest creatures. Nothing
is good but as it resembles him, as nothing is hot but as it resembles fire,
the prime subject of heat.

God is omnipotent, therefore no good can be wanting to him. If he were
destitute of any which he could have, he were not almighty. He is so good,
that there is no mixture of anything, which can be called not good in him ;
everything besides him wants some good which others have. Nothing can
be so evil as God is good. There can be no evil, but there is some mixture
of good with it, no nature so evil, but there is some spark of goodness in
it : but God is a good which hath no taint of evil ; nothing can be so supreme
an evil, as God is supreme goodness.

He is only good without capacity of increase ; he is all good, and un-
mixedly good — none good but God ; a goodness like the sun, that hath all
light and no darkness. That is the second thing, he is the supreme and
chief goodness.

3. This goodness is communicative. None so communicatively good as
God. As the notion of God includes goodness, so the notion of goodness
includes diflfusiveness ; without goodness he would cease to be a deity, and
without diffusiveness he would cease to be good. The being good is neces-
sary to the being of God, for goodness is nothing else in the notion of it,
but a strong incUnation to do good ; either to find or make an object, wherein
to exercise itself, according to the propension of its own nature, and it is an
inclination of communicating itself, not for its own interest, but the good of
the object it pitcheth upon. Thus God is good by nature, and his nature is
not without activity, he acts conveniently to his own nature : Ps. cxix. 68,
' Thou art good, and dost good.' And nothing accrues to him by the com-
munications of himself to others, since his blessedness was as great before
the frame of any creature, as ever it was since the erecting of the world, so
that the goodness of Christ himself increaseth not the lustre of his happi-
ness : Ps. xvi. 2, ' My goodness extends not to thee.' He is not of a
niggardly and envious nature ; he is too rich to have any cause to envy, and
too good to have any will to envy ; he is as liberal as he is rich, according

288 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

to the capacity of the object about which his goodness is exercised. The
divine goodness being the supreme goodness, is goodness in the highest
degree of activity ; not an idle, enclosed, pent-up goodness, as a spring shut
up, or a fountain sealed, bubbling up within itself, but bubbling out of itself;
a fountain of gardens to water every part of his creation : ' He is as ointment
poured forth,' Cant. i. 3. Nothing spreads itself more than oil, and takes
up a larger place wheresoever it drops. It may be no less said of the good-
ness of God, as it is of the fulness of Christ, Eph. i. 23, ' He fills all in
all.' He fills rational creatures with understanding, sensitive nature with
vigour and motion, the whole world with beauty and sweetness. Every
taste, every touch of a creature, is a taste and touch of divine goodness.
Divine goodness ofi'ers itself in one spark in this creature, in another spark
in the other creature, and altogether make up a goodness inconceivable by
any creature. The whole mass and extracted spirit of it is infinitely short
of the goodness of the divine nature, imperfect shadows of that goodness
which is in himself.

Indeed, the more excellent anything is, the more nobly it acts. How re-
motely doth light, that excellent brightness of the creation, disperse itself !
How doth that glorious creature which God hath set in the heavens, spread
its wings over heaven and earth, roll itself about the world, cast its beams
upward and downward, insinuate into all corners, pierce the depths, and
shoot up its rays into the heights, encircle the higher and lower creatures
in its arms, reach out its communications to influence everything under the
earth, as well as dart its beams of hght and heat on things above or upon
the earth : Ps. xix. 6, ' Nothing is hid from it ;' not from its power, nor
from its sweetness. How communicative also is water, a necessary and
excellent creature ! How active is it in a river to nourish the living creatures
engendered in its womb ; refresheth every shore it runs by, promotes the pro-
pagation of fruits for the nourishment, and bestows a verdure upon the
ground for the delight of man ; and where it cannot reach the higher ground
in its substance, it doth by its vapours, mounted up and concocted by the
sun, and gently distilled upon the earth, for the opening its womb to bring
forth its fruits. God is more prone to communicate himself than the sun
to spread his wings, or the earth to mount up its fruits, or the water to
multiply living creatures. Goodness is his nature. Hence were there in-
ternal commmunications of himself from eternity, difi"usions of himself with-
out himself in time in the creation of the world, like a full vessel running
over. He created the world that he might impart his goodness to something
without him, and diffuse larger measures of his goodness after he had laid
the first foundation of it in its being, and therefore he created several sorts
of creatures that they might be capable of various and distinct measures of
his liberality, according to the distinct capacities of their nature, but imparted
most to the rational creature, because that is only capable of an understand-
ing to know him, and will to embrace him. He is the highest goodness,
and therefore a communicative goodness, and acts excellently according to
his nature.

4. God is necesarily good. None is necessarily good but God ; he is as
necessarily good, as he is necessarily God. His goodness is as inseparable
from his nature as his holiness. He is good by nature, not only by will, as
he is holy by nature, not only by will : he is good in his nature and good in his
actions, and as he cannot be bad in his nature, so he cannot be bad in his
communications ; he can no more act contrary to this goodness in any of
his actions, than he can un-God himself. It is not necessary that God
should create a world ; he was at his own choice whether he would create or

Makk X. 18.] god's goodness. 289

no ; but when he resolves to make a world, it is necessary that he should
make it good, because he is goodness itself, and cannot act against his own
nature ; he could not create anything without goodness in the very act. The
very act of creation, or communicating being to anything without himself, is
in itself an act of goodness as well as an act of power ; had he not been
good in himself, nothing could have been endued with any goodness by him.
In the act of giving being he is liberal, the being he bestows is a displaying
his own liberality ; he could not confer what he needs not, and which could
not be deserved, without being bountiful. Since what was nothing could
not merit to be brought into being, the very act of giving to nothing a beiiig
was an act of choice goodness.

He could not create anything without goodness as the motive, and the
necessary motive. His goodness could not necessitate him to make the
world, but his goodness could only move him to resolve to make a world ;
he was not bound to erect and fashion it because of his goodness, but he
could not frame it without his goodness as the moving cause.

He could not create anything, but he must create it good. It had been
inconsistent with the supreme goodness of his natui-e to have created only
murderous, ravenous, injurious creatures ; to have created a bedlam rather
than a world. A mere heap of confusion would have been as inconsistent
with his divine goodness as with his divine wisdom.

Again, when his goodness had moved him to make a creature, his good-
ness would necessarily move him to be beneficial to his creature ; not that
this necessity results from any merit in the creature which he had framed,
but from the excellency and diflusiveness of his own nature, and his own
glory, the end for which he formed it, which would have been obscure, yea,
nothing, without some degrees of his bounty. What occasion of acknow-
ledgments and praise could the creature have for its being, if God had given
him only a miserable being, while it was innocent in action ? The good-
ness of God would not suffer him to make a creature, without providing
conveniences for it, so long as he thought good to maintain its being, and
furnishing it with that which was necessary to answer that end for which he
created it ; and his own nature would not suffer him to be unkind to his
rational creature while he was innocent. It had been injustice to inflict evil
upon the creature that had not offended, and had no relation to an offending
creature ; the nature of God could not have brought forth such an act.
And therefore some* say that God, after he had created man, could
not presently annihilate him, and take away his life and being. As a
sovereign he might do it, as almighty he was able to do it, as well as create
him, but in regard of his goodness he could not morally do it ; for had he
annihilated man as soon as ever he had made him, he had not made man
for himself, and for his own glory, to be loved, worshipped, sought, and
acknowledged by him ; he would not then have been the end of man ; he
had created him in vain, and the world in vain, which he assures us he did
not, Isa. xlv. 18, 19. And certainly, if the gifts of God be without repent-
ance, man could not have been annihilated after his creation without
repentance in God, without any cause, had not sin entered into the world.
If God did not say to man, after sin had made its entrance into the world,
' Seek ye me in vain,' he could not, because of his goodness, have said so
to man in his innocence. As God is necessarily mbtd, so he is necessarily
will ; as he is necessarily knowing, so he is necessarily loving. He could
not be blessed if he did not know himself, and his own perfection ; nor
good if he did not dehght in himself and his own perfections. And
* Cocceii, Sum. Theolog. p. 91.

VOL. II. T

290 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

this goodness, whereby he delights in himself, is the source of his delight in
his creatures, wherein he sees the footsteps of himself. If he loves himself,
he cannot but love the resemblance of himself, and the image of his own
goodness. He loves himself, because he is the highest goodness and excel-
lency, and loves everything as it resembles himself, because it is an efflux
of his own goodness ; and as he doth necessarily love himself, and his own
excellency, so he doth necessarily love anything that resembles that excel-
lency, which is the primary object of his esteem. But,

6. Though he be necessarily good, yet he is also freely good. The
necessity of the goodness of his nature hinders not the liberty of his actions.
The matter of his acting is not at all necessary, but the manner of his acting
in a good and bountiful way is necessary as well as free.-:= He created the world
and man freely, because he might choose whether he would create it ; but he
created them good necessarily, because he was first necessarily good in his
nature, before he was freely a creator. When he created man, he freely gave
him a positive law, but necessarily a wise and righteous law, because he
was necessarily wise and righteous before he was freely a lawgiver. When
he makes a promise, he freely lets the word go out of his lips ; but when he
hath made it, he is necessarily a faithful performer, because he was neces-
sarily true and righteous in his nature, before he was freelj' a promiser.
God is necessarily good in his nature, but free in his communications of it.
To make him necessarily to communicate his goodness in the first creation
of the creature, would render him but impotent, good without liberty and
without will; if the communication of it be not free, the eternity of the world
must necessarily be concluded, which some anciently asserted from the natural-
ness of God's goodness, making the world flow from God as hght from the sun.

God indeed is necessarily good, ojfective, in regard of his nature ; but
freely good, effective, in regard of the effluxes of it to this or that particular
subject hepitcheth on. He is not necessarily communicative of his good-
ness, as the sun of his light, or a tree of its cooling shade, that chooseth not
its objects, but enlightens all indiflerently, without any variation or dis-
tinction ; this were to make God of no more understanding than the sun,
to shine not where it pleas eth, but where it must. He is an under-
standing agent, and hath a sovereign right to choose his own subjects. It
would not be a supreme goodness, if it were not a voluntary goodness. It
is agreeable to the nature of the highest good to be absolutely free, to dis-
pense his goodness in what methods and measures he pleaseth, according
to the free determinations of his own will, guided by the wisdom of his
mind, and regulated by the holiness of his nature. He is not to ' give an
account of any of his matters,' Job xxxiii. 13 ; 'He will have mercy on
whom he will have mere}', and he will have compassion on whom he will
have compassion,' Eom. ix. 15. And he will be good to whom be will be
good ; when he doth act, he cannot but act well ; so it is necessary ; yet he
may act this good or that good to this or that degree ; so it is free. As it is
the perfection of his nature, it is necessary ; as it is the communication of
his bounty, it is voluntary. The eye cannot but see if it be open, yet it
may glance upon this or that colour, fix upon this or that object, as it is
conducted by the will. God necessarily loves himself, because he is good,
yet not by constraint, but freedom, because his afiection to himself is from a
knowledge of himself; he necessarily loves his own image, because it is his
image, yet freely, because not blindly, but from motions of understanding
and will. What necessity could there be upon him to resolve to communi-
cate his goodness ? It could not be to make himself better by it ; for he
* Gilbert, de Dei Dominio, p. 6.

Mabk X. 18.J god's goodness. 291

had a goodness uncapable of any addition ; he confers a goodness on his
creatures, but reaps not a harvest of goodness to his own essence from his
creatures. "V\Tiat obligation could there be from the creature to confer a
goodness on him to this or that degree, for this or that duration ? If he
had not created a man nor angel, he had done them no wrong ; if he had
given them only a simple being he had manifested a part of his goodness,
without giving them a right to challenge any more of him ; if he had taken
away their beings after a time when he had answered his end, he had done
them no injury ; for what law obliged him to enrich them, and leave them
in that being wherein he had invested them, but his sole goodness? What-
ever sparks of goodness any creature hath are the free eflusions of God's
bounty, the oftspring of his own inclination to do well, the simple favour of
the donor, not purchased, not merited by the creature. God is as uncon-
strained in his liberty, in all his communications, as infinite in. hisgoodness,
the fountain of them.

6. This goodness is communicative with the greatest pleasure. Moses
desired to see his glory, God assures him he should see his goodness, Exod.
xxxiii. 18, 19, intimating that his goodness is his glory, and his glory his
delight also. He sends not forth his blessings with an ill will; he doth not
stay till they are squeezed from him ; he ' prevents men with his blessings
of goodness,' Ps. xxi. 3 ; he is most delighted when he is most difl'usive,
and his pleasure in bestowing is larger than his creatures' in possessing; he
is not covetous of his own treasures ; he lays up his goodness in order to
laying it out with a complacency wholly divine. The jealousy princes have
of their subjects makes them sparing of their gifts, for fear of giving them
materials for rebellion. God's foresight of the ill use men would make of
his benefits damped him not in bestowing his largesses. He is incapable
of envy ; his own happiness can no more be diminished than it can be
increased. None can overtop him in goodness, because nothing hath any
good, but what is derived from him; his gifts are without repentance.
Sorrow hath no footing in him, who is infinitely happy as well as infinitely
good. Goodness and envy are inconsistent. How unjustly then did the
devil accuse God ! What God gives out of goodness he gives with joy and
gladness. He did not only will that we should be, but rejoice that he had
brought us into being. ' He rejoiced in his works,' Ps. civ, 21. And his
Wisdom stood by him, ' delighting in the habitable parts of the earth,' Prov.
viii. 31. He beheld the world after its creation with a complacency, and
still governs it with the same pleasure wherewith he reviewed it. Infinite
cheerfulness attends infinite goodness. He would not give if he bad not a
pleasure that others should enjoy his goodness; since he is better than any-
thing, and more communicative than anything, he is more joyful in giving
out than the sun can be to run its race in pouring forth light. He is said
only to repent and grieve, when men answer not the obligations and ends
of his goodness, which would be their own felicity as well as his glory.
Though he doth not force greater degrees of his goodness upon those that
neglect it, yet he denies thom not to those that solicit him for it. It is
always greater pleasure to him to impart upon the importunities of the
creatures, than it is to a mother to reach out her breast to her crying and
longing infant. He is not wearied by the solicitations of men, he is pleased
with their prayers, because he is pleased with the imparting of his own
goodness. He seems to be in travail with it, longing to be delivered of it
into the lap of his creature. He is as much delighted with petitions for his
liberality in bestowing his best goodness, as princes are weary of the craving
of their subjects. None can be so desirous to squeeze those that are under

292 chaknock's works. [Maek X. 18.

them, as God is delighted to enlarge his hand towards them. It is the
nature of his goodness to be glad of men's solicitations for it, because they
are significant valuations of it, and therefore fit occasions for him to bestow
it. Since he doth not delight in the unhappiuess of any of his creatures,
he certainly delights in what may conduce unto their felicity. He doth with
the same delight multiply the effects of his goodness, where his wisdom sees
it convenient, as he beheld the first fruits of his goodness, with a com-
placency upon the laying the topstone of the creation.

7. The displaying of this goodness was the motive and end of all his
works of creation and providence.* God being infinitely wise, could not
act without the highest reason, and for the highest end. The reason that
induced him to create, must be of as great an eminency as himself ; the
motive could not be taken from without him, because there was nothing
but himself in being ; it must be taken therefore from within himself, and
from some one of those most excellent perfections whereby we conceive him.
But upon the exact consideration of all of them, none can seem to challenge
that honour of being the motive of them, to resolve the setting forth any
work but his own goodness. This being the fii-st thing manifest in his
creation, seems to be the first thing moving him to a resolution to create.
"Wisdom may be considered as directing, power considered as acting ; but it
is natural to reflect upon goodness as moving the one to direct, the other to
act. Power was the principle of his action, wisdom the rule of his action,
goodness the motive of his action ; principle and rule are awakened by the
motive, and subservient to the end. That which is the most amiable per-
fection in the divine nature, and that which he first took notice of as the foot-
steps of them in the distinct view of every day's work, and ihe general view of
the whole frame, seems to claim the best right to be entitled the motive and
end of his creation of things.

God could have no end but himself, because there was nothing besides
himself. Again, the end of eveiy agent is that which he esteems good, and
the best good for that kind of action. Since nothing is to be esteemed good
but God, nothing can be the ultimate end of God but himself and his own
goodness. What a man wills chiefly is his end ; but God cannot will any
other thing but himself as his end, because there is nothing superior to him-
self in goodness. He cannot will anything, that supremely serves himself
and his own goodness as his end ; for if he did, that which he wills, must
be superior to himself in goodness, and then he is not God ; or inferior to
them in goodness, and then he would not be righteous, in willing that which
is a lower good before a higher. God cannot will anything as his end of
acting but himself, without undeifying himself. God's will being infinitely
good, cannot move for anything but what is infinitely good ; and therefore
whatsoever God made, he made for himself, Prov. xvi, 4, that whatsoever
he made might bear a badge of this perfection upon it, and be a discovery of
his wonderful goodness ; for the making things for himself doth not signify
any indigence in God, that he made anything to increase his excellency (for
that is capable of no addition), but to manifest his excellency. God possess-
ing everything eminently in himself, did not create the world for any need
he had of it ; finite things were unable to make any accession to that which
is infinite. Man indeed builds a house to be a shelter to him against wind
and weather, and makes clothes to secure him from cold, and plants gardens
for his recreation and health. God is above all those little helps ; he did
not make the world for himself in such a kind, but for himself, i. e. the
manifestation of himself, and the riches of his nature ; not to make himself
* Amyrald, Moral, torn. i. p. 260.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 293

blessed, but to discover his own blessedness to his creatures, and communi-
cate something of it to them. He did not garnish the world with so much
bounty, that he might live more happily than he did before ; but that his
rational creatures might have fit conveniencies. As the end for which God
demands the performance of our duty is not for his own advantage, but for
our good, Deut. x. 13, so the end why he conferred upon us the excellency
of such a being, was for our good, and the discovery of his goodness to us.
For had not God created the world, he had been wholly unknown to any
but himself ; he produced creatures that he might be known ; as the sun
shines not only to discover other things, but to be seen itself in its beauty
and brightness. God would create things, because he would be known in
his glory and Hberality ; hence is it that he created intellectual creatures,
because without them the rest of the creation could not be taken notice of ;
it had been in some sort in vain ; for no nature lower than an understand-
ing nature was able to know the marks of God in the creation, and acknow-
ledge him as God. In this regard, God is good above all creatures, because
he intends only to communicate his goodness in creation, not to acquire any
goodness or excellency from them, as men do in their framing of things.
God is all, and is destitute of nothing, and therefore nothing accrues to him
by the creation, but the acknowledgment of his goodness. This goodness,
therefore, must be the motive and end of all his works.

III. The third thing, that God is good.

1. The more excellent anything is in nature, the more of goodness and
kindness it hath. For we see more of love and kindness in creatures that
are endued with sense, to their descendants, than in plants, that have only
a principle of growth. Plants preserve their seeds whole that are enclosed
in them ; animals look to their young only after they are dropped from them ;
yet after some time take no more notice of them than of a stranger that
never had any birth from them. But man, that hath a higher principle of
reason, cherisheth his offspring, and gives them marks of his goodness
while he lives, and leaves not the world at the time of his death without
some testimonies of it ; much more must God, who is a higher principle
than sense or reason, be good and bountiful to all his offspring. The more
perfect anything is, the more it doth communicate itself. The sun is more
excellent than the stars, and therefore doth more sensibly, more extensively
disperse its liberal beams than the stars do. And the better any man is,
the more charitable he is. God being the most excellent nature, having no-
thing more excellent than himself, because nothing more ancient than him-
self, who is the Ancient of days, there is nothing therefore better and more
bountiful than himself.

2. He is the cause of all created goodness, he must therefore himself be
the supreme good. What good is in the heavens, is the product of some
being above the earth ; and those varieties of goodness in the earth, and
several creatures, are somewhere in their fulness and union. That, therefore,
which possess all those scattered goodnesses in their fulness, must be all good,
all that good which is displayed in creatures, therefore sovereignly best.
Whatsoever natural or moral goodness there is in the world, in angels, or
men, or inferior creatures, is a line drawn from that centre, the bubbHngs
of that fountain. God cannot but be better than all, since the goodness that
is in creatures is the fruit of his own. If he were not good, he could pro-
duce no good ; he could not bestow what he had not. If the creature be
good, as the apostle says * every creature' is, 1 Tim. iv. 4, he must needs
be better than all, because they have nothing but what is derived to them

294 chaenock's works. [Maek X. 18.

from him ; and much more goodness than all, because finite beings are not
capable of receiving into them, and containing in themselves, all that good-
ness which is in an infinite being. When we search for good in creatures,
they come short of that satisfaction which is in God, Ps. iv. 6. As the
certainty of a first principle of all things is necessarily concluded from the
being of creatures, and the upholding and sustaining power and virtue of
God is concluded from the mutability of those things in the world ; whence
we infer, that there must be some stable foundation of those tottering things,
some firm hinge upon which those changeable things do move, without
which there would be no stability in the kinds of things, no order, no agree-
ment, or union among them ; so from the goodness of everything, and
their usefulness to us, we must conclude him good, who made all those
things. And since we find distinct goodnesses in the creature, we must
conclude that one principle whence they did flow, excels in the glory of
goodness. All those little glimmerings of goodness which are scattered in
the creatures, as the image in the glass, represent the face, posture, motion
of him whose image it is, but not in the fulness of life and spirit, as in the
original ; it is but a shadow at the best, and speaks something more excel-
lent in the copy. As God hath an infiniteness of being above them, so he
hath a supremacy of goodness beyond them. What they have, is but a
participation from him ; what he hath, must be infinitely super-eminent
above them. If anything be good by itself, it must be infinitely good, it
would set itself no bounds ; we must make as many gods as particulars of
goodness in the world ; but being good by the bounty of another, that from
whence they flow must be the chief goodness. It is God's excellency and
goodness, which like a beam pierceth all things.- He decks spirits with
reason, endues matter with form, furnisheth everything with useful qualities.

As one beam of the sun illustrates fire, water, earth, so one beam of God
enlightens and endows minds, souls, and universal nature. Nothing in the
world had its goodness from itself, any more than it had its being from itself.
The cause must be richer than the efiect.

But that which I intend is the defence of this goodness.

(1.) The goodness of God is not impaired by sufi'ering sin to enter into the
world, and man to fall thereby. It is rather a testimony of God's goodness
that he gave man an ability to be happy, than any charge against his good-
ness that he settled man in a capacity to be evil. God was first a benefactor
to man, before man could be a rebel against God. May it not be inquired,
whether it had not been against the wisdom of God to have made a rational
creature with liberty, and not sufi"er him to act according to the nature he
was endowed with, and to follow his own choice for some time ? Had it
been wisdom to frame a free creature, and totally to restrain that creature
from following its liberty ? Had it been goodness, as it were, to force the
creature to be happy against its will ? God's goodness furnished Adam with
a power to stand ; was it contrary to his goodness to leave Adam to a free use
of that power ? To make a creature, and not let that creature act accord-
ing to the freedom of his nature, might have been thought to have been a
blot upon his wisdom, and a constraint upon the creature, not to make use
of that freedom of his nature which the divine goodness had bestowed upon
him. To what purpose did God make a law to govern his rational creature,
and yet resolve that creature should not have his choice, whether he would
obey it or no ? Had he been really constrained to observe it, his observa-
tion of it could no more have been called obedience, than the acts of brutes,
that have a kind of natural constraint upon them by the instinct of their
* Ficinus in Com. Amor. Orat. cap. ii. p. 1326.

Mark X, 18.] god's goodness. 295

nature, can be called obedience ; in vain had God endowed a creature with
so great and noble a principle as liberty. Had it been goodness in God,
after he had made a reasonable creature, to govern him in the same manner
as he did brutes, by a necessary instinct ? It was the goodness of God to
the nature of men and angels to leave them in such a condition to be able
to give him a voluntary obedience, a nobler offering than the whole creation
could present him with ; and shall this goodness be undervalued, and
accounted mean, because man made an ill use of it, and turned it into wan-
tonness ? As the unbelief of man doth not diminish the redeeming grace of
God, Kom. iii. 3, so neither doth the fall of man lessen the creating good-
ness of God. Besides, why should the permission of sin be thought more a
blemish to his goodness than the providing a way of redemption for the
destroying the works of sin and the devil be judged the glory of it, whereby
he discovered a goodness of grace that surpassed the bounds of nature ? If
this were a thing that might seem too obscure, or deface the goodness of
God, in the permission of the fall of angels and Adam, it was in order to
bring forth a greater goodness in a more illustrious pomp to the view of the
world : Rom, xi. 32, ' God hath concluded them all in unbehef, that he
might have mercy upon all.' But if nothing could be alleged for the defence
of his goodness in this, it were most comely for an ignorant creature not to
impeach his goodness, but adore him in his proceedings, in the same lan-
guage the apostle doth : ver. 33, ' Oh the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his judgments, and
his ways past finding out ! '

(2.) Nor is his goodness prejudiced by not making all things the equal sub-
jects of it.

[1.] It is true all things are not subjects of an equal goodness. The good-
ness of God is not so illustriously manifested in one thing as another. In
the creation he hath dropped goodness upon some, in giving them beings
and sense ; and poured it upon others, in endowing them with understand-
ing and reason. The sun is full of light, but it hath a want of sense ; brutes
excel in the vigour of sense, but they are destitute of the light of reason;
man hath a mind and reason conferred on him, but he hath neither the
acuteness of mind nor the quickness of motion equal with an angel. In
providence also he doth give abundance, and opens his hand to some, to
others he is more sparing ; he gives greater gifts of knowledge to some,
while he lets others remain in ignorance ; he strikes down some, and raiseth
others ; he afflicts some with a continual pain, while he blesseth others with
an uninterrupted health ; he hath chosen one nation wherein to set up his
gospel sun, and leaves another benighted in their own ignorance. Known
was God in Judea, they were a peculiar people alone of all the nations of
the earth, Deut. xiv. 2. He was not equally good to the angels ; he held
forth his hand to support some in their happy habitation, while he suffered
others to sink in irreparable ruin ; and he is not so diffusive here of his
goodness to his own as he will be in heaven. Here their sun is sometimes
clouded, but there all clouds and shades will be blown away and melted into
nothing ; instead of drops here, there will be above rivers of life. Is any
creature destitute of the open marks of his goodness, though all are not
enriched with those signal characters which he vouchsafes to others ? He
that is unerring pronounced everything good distinctly in its production,
and the whole good in its universal perfection, Gen. i. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21,
25, 31, Though he made not all things equally good, yet he made nothing
evil ; and though one creature, in regard of its nature, may be better than
another, yet an inferior creature, in regard of its usefulness in the order of

296 chaenock's works. [Mark X. 18.

the creation, may be better than a superior. The earth hath a goodness in
bringing forth fruits, and the waters in the sea a goodness in multiplying
food. That any of us have a being, is goodness ; that we have not so
healthful a being as others, is unequal, but not unjust, goodness. He is
good to all, though not in the same degree : ' The whole earth is full of his
mercy,' Ps. cxix. 64. A good man is good to his cattle, to his servants ;
he makes a provision for all, but he bestows not those floods of bounty upon
them that he doth upon his children. As there are various gifts, but one
Spirit, 1 Cor. xii. 4, so there are various distributions, but from one good-
ness ; the drops as well as the fuller streams are of the same fountain, and
relish of the nature of it ; and though he do not make all men partake of
the riches of his grace after the corruption of their nature, is his goodness
disgraced hereby, or doth he merit the title of cruelty ? Will any diminish
the goodness of a father for his not setting up his son after he hath foolishly
and wilfully proved bankrupt, or not rather admire his liberality in giving
him so large a stock to trade with, when he first set him up in the world?

[2.] The goodness of God to creatures is to be measured by their distinct
usefulness to the common end. It were better for a toad or serpent to be a
man, i.e. better for the creature itself, if it were advanced to a higher degree
of being, but not better for the universe. He could have made every pebble
a living creature, and every living creature a rational one ; but that he made
everything as we see, it was a goodness to the creature itself; but that he
did not make it of a higher elevation in nature, was a part of his goodness
to the rational creature. If all were rational creatures, there would have
been wanting creatures of an inferior nature for their conveniency ; there
would have wanted the manifestation of the variety and fulness of his good-
ness. Had all things in the world been rational creatures, much of that
goodness which he hath communicated to rational creatures would not have
appeared. How could man have shewed his skill in taming and managing
creatures more mighty than himself ? What materials would there have
been to manifest the goodness of God bestowed upon the reasonable crea-
tures for framing excellent works and inventions ? Much of the goodness
of God hath lain wrapped up from sense and understanding. All other
things partake not of so great a goodness as man ; yet they are so subser-
vient to that goodness poured forth on man, that little of it could have been
seen without them. Consider man, every member in his body hath a good-
ness in itself ; but a greater goodness as referred to the whole, without which
the goodness of the more noble part would not be manifested. The head is
the most excellent member, and hath greater impressions of divine goodness
upon it, in regard that it is the organ of understanding. Were every mem-
ber of the body a head, what a deformed monster would man be ! If he
were all head, where would be feet for motion and arms for action ? Man
would be fit only for thought, and not for exercise. The goodness of God
in giving man so noble a part as the head, could not be known without a
tongue, whereby to express the conception of his mind, and without feet
and hands whereby to act much of what he conceives and determines, and
execute the resolves of his will. All those have a goodness in themselves,
an honour, a comeliness from the goodness of God, 1 Cor. xii. 22, 23 ; but
not so great a goodness as the nobler part. Yet if you consider them in
their functions, and refer them to that excellent member which they serve,
their inferior goodness is absolutely necessary to the goodness of the other,
without which the goodness of the head and understanding would lie in
obscurity, be insignificant to the whole world, and in a great measure to the
person himself that wants such members.

Mabk X. 18.J god's goodxess. 297

[3.] The goodness of God is more seen in this inequality. If God were
equally good to all, it would destroy commerce, unity, the links of human
society, damp charity, and render that useless which is one of the noblest
and dehghtfuilest duties to be exercised here. It would cool prayer, which is
excited by wants, and is a necessary demonstration of the creature's depend-
ence on God, But in this inequality, every man hath enough in his enjoy-
ments for praise, and in his wants matter for his prayer. Besides, the in-
equahty of the creature is the ornament of the world. What pleasure could a
garden afford if there were but one sort of flowers, or one sort of plants ?
Far less than when there is variety to please the sight and every other sense.

Again, the freedom of divine goodness, which is the glory of it, is evident
hereby. Had he been alike good to all, it would have looked like a neces-
sary, not a free act ; but by the inequality, it is manifest that he doth not
do it by a natural necessity, as the sun shines, but by a voluntary liberty,
as being the entire lord and free disposer of his own goods ; and that it is
the gift of the pleasure of his will, as well as the efflux of his nature ; that he
hath not a goodness without wisdom, but a wisdom as rich as his bounty.

[4.] The goodness of God could not be equally communicated to all after
their settlement in their several beings, because they have not a capacity in
their natures for it. He doth bestow the marks of his goodness according
to that natural capacity of fitness he perceives in his creatures. As the
water of the sea fills every creek and gulf with different measures, according
to the compass each have to contain it ; and as the sun doth disperse light
to the stars above and the places below, to some more, to some less, accord-
ing to the measures of their reception : God doth not do good to all crea-
tures according to the greatness of his own power, and the extent of his own
wealth, but according to the capacity of the subject ; not so much good as
he can do, but so much good as the creature can receive. The creature
would sink if God would pour out all his goodness upon it. As Moses
would have perished if God should have shewn him all his glory, Exod.
xxxiii. 18, 20. He doth manifest more goodness to his reasonable crea-
tures, because they are more capable of acknowledging and setting forth his
goodness.

[5.1 God ought to be allowed the free disposal of his own goodness. Is
not God the lord of his own gifts ; and will you not allow him the privilege
of having some more peculiar objects of his love and pleasure, which you
allow without blame to man, and use yourself without any sense of a crime ?
Is a prince esteemed good, though he be not equally bountiful to all his
servants, nor equally gracious in pardoning all his rebels ? and shall the
goodness of the great Sovereign of the world be impeached, notwithstanding
those mighty distributions of it, because he will act according to his own
wisdom and pleasure, and not according to men's fancies and humours ?
Must purblind reason be the judge and director how God shall dispose of
his own, rather than his own infinite wisdom and sovereign will ? Is God
less good because there are numberless nothings which he is able to bring
into being ? He could create a world of more creatures than he hath done.
Doth he therefore wish evil to them by letting them remain in that nothing
from whence he could draw them? No; but he denies that good to them
which he is able, if he pleased, to confer upon them.

If God doth not give that good to a creature which it wants by his own

demerit, can he be said to wish evil to it, or only to deny that goodness

which the creature hath forfeited,* and which is at God's liberty to retain

or disperse ? Though God cannot but love his own image where he finds

* Camero, p. 80.

298 charnock's works. [IIabk X. 18.

it, yet when this image is lost, and the devil's image voluntarily received,
he may choose whether he will manifest his goodness to such a one or no.
Will you not account that man Uberal, that distributes his alms to a great
company, though he rejects some. Much more will you account him good,
if he rejects none that implore him, but dispenseth his doles to every one
upon their petition. And is he not good because he will not bestow a far-
thing upon those that address not themselves to him ? God is so good, that
he denies not the best good to those that seek him. He hath promised life
and happiness to them that do so. Is he less good because he will not dis-
tribute his goodness to those that despise him ? Though he be good, yet
his wisdom is the rule of dispensing his goodness.

[6.] The severe punishment of ofienders, and the afflictions he inflicts
upon his servants, are no violations of his goodness. The notion of God's
vindictive justice is as naturally inbred and implanted in the mind of man
as that of his goodness, and those two sentiments never shocked one another.
The heathen never thought him bad because he was just, nor unrighteous
because he was good. God being infinitely good, cannot possibly intend or
act anything but what is good. ' Thou art good, and thou dost good,' Ps.
cxix. 68; i.e. whatsoever thou dost is good, whatsoever it be, pleasant or
painful to the creature. Punishments themselves are not a moral evil in
the person that inflicts, though they are a natural evil in the person that
suflers them.* In ordering punishment to the wicked, good is added to
evil ; in ordering impunity to the wicked, evil is added to evil. To punish
wickedness is right, therefore good ; to leave men uncontrolled in their
wickedness is unrighteous, and therefore bad. But again, shall his justice
in some few judgments in the world impeach his goodness, more than his
wonderful patience to sinners is able to silence the calumnies against him ?
Is not his hand fuller of gracious doles than of dreadful thunderbolts ?
Doth he not oftener seem forgetful of his justice, when he pours upon the
guilty the streams of his mercy, than to be forgetful of his goodness when
he sprinkles in the world some drops of his wrath ?

First, God's judgments in the world do not infringe his goodness ; for,
First, The justice of God is a part of the goodness of his nature. God
himself thought so, when he told Moses he would make all his goodness pass
before him, Exod. xxxiii. 19. He leaves not out in that enumeration of the
parts of it his resolution by ' no means to clear the guilty ; but to visit the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children,' Exod. xxxiv. 7. It is a property
of goodness to hate evil, and therefore a property of goodness to punish it.
It is no less righteousness to give according to the deserts of a person in a
way of punishment, than to reward a person that obeys his precepts in a
way of recompence. "Whatsoever is righteous is good ; sin is evil, and
therefore whatsoever doth witness against it is good. His goodness there-
fore shines in his justice, for without being just he could not be good. Sin
is a moral disorder in the world. Every sin is injustice. Injustice breaks
God's order in the world ; there is a necessity therefore of justice to put
the world in order. Punishment orders the person committing the injury,
who, when he will not be in the order of obedience, must be in the order of
sufiering for God's honour. The goodness of all things which God pro-
nounced so, consisted in their order and beneficial helpfulness to one
another. WTien this order is inverted, the goodness of the creature ceas-
eth. If it be a bad thing to spoil this order, is it not a part of divine good-
ness to reduce them into order, that they may be reduced in some measure
to their goodness ? Do we ever account a governor less in goodness
* Boetius.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 299

because he is exact in justice, and pnnishetli that which makes a disorder
in his government? And is it a diminution of the divine goodness to punish
that which makes a disorder in the world ? As wisdom without goodness
would be a serpentine craft, and issue in destruction, so goodness without
justice would be impotent indulgence, and cast things into confusion. When
Abel's blood cried out for vengeance against Cain, it spake a good thing;
Christ's blood, speaking better things than the blood of Abel, implies that
Abel's blood spake a good thing ; the comparative implies a positive, Heb.
xii. 24. If it were the goodness of that innocent blood to demand justice,
it could not be a badness in the Sovereign of the world to execute it. How
can God sustain the part of a good and righteous judge, if he did not pre-
serve human society ? And how would it be preserved without manifesting
himself by public judgments against public wrongs ? Is there not as great
a necessity that goodness should have instruments of judgment, as that there
should be prisons, bridewells, and gibbets in a good commonwealth ? Did
not the thunderbolts of God sometimes roar in the ears of men, they would
sin with a higher hand than they do, fly more in the face of God, make the
■world as much a moral as it was at first a natural chaos. The ingenuity of
men would be damped if there were not something to work upon their fears
to keep them in their due order. Impunity of the nocent person is worse
than any punishment. It is a misery to want medicines for the cure of a
sharp disease, and a mark of goodness in a prince to consult for the security
of the political body, by cutting off a gangrened and corrupting member.
And what prince would deserve the noble title of good, if he did not restrain
by punishment those evils which impair the public welfare ? Is it not
necessary that the examples of sin, whereby others have been encouraged
to wickedness, should be made examples of justice, whereby the same per-
sons, and others, may be discouraged from what before they were greedily
inclined unto ? Is not a hatred of what is bad and unworthy, as much a part
of divine goodness, as a love to what is excellent and bears a resemblance to
himself ? Could he possibly be accounted God, that should bear the same
degree of affection to a prodigious vice as to a sublime virtue, and should
behave himself in the same manner of carriage to the innocent and culpable ?
Could you account him good if he did always with pleasure behold evil,
and perpetually suffer the oppressions of the innocent under unpunished
wickedness ? How should we know the goodness of the divine nature, and
his afi'ection to the goodness of his creature, if he did not by some acts of
severity witness his implacable aversion against sin, and his care to pre-
serve the good government of the world ? If corrupted creatures should
always be exempt from the effects of his indignation, he would declare him-
self not to be infinitely good, because he would not be really righteous. No
man thinks it a natural vice in the sun, by the power of its scorching heat,
to dry up and consume the unwholesome vapours of the air; nor are the
demonstrations of divine justice any blots upon his goodness, since they are
both for the defence and glory of his holiness, and for the preservation of
the beauty and order of the world.

Secondly, Is it not part of the goodness of God to make laws, and annex
threatenings ; and shall it be an impeachment of his goodness to support
them ? The more severe laws are made for deterring evil, the better is that
prince accounted in making such provision for the welfare of the community.
The design of laws, and the design of upholding the honour of those laws by
the punishment of offenders, is to promote goodness, and restrain evil. The
execution of those laws must be therefore pursuant to the same design of
goodness which first settled them. Would it not be contrary to goodness,

300 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

to suffer that which was designed for the support of goodness to be scorned
and slighted ? It would neither be prudence nor goodness, but folly and
vice, to let laws, which were made to promote virtue, be broken with im-
punity. Would not this be to weaken virtue, and give a new life and vigour
to vice ? Not only the righteousness of the law itself, but the wisdom of
the lawgiver, would be exposed to contempt, if the violations of it remained
uncontrolled, and the violence offered by men passed unpunished. None
but will acknowledge the divine precepts to be the image of the righteous-
ness of God, and beneficial for the common good of the world : Rom. vii.
12, ' The law is holy, just, and good,' and so is every precept of it. The
law was for no other end but to keep the creature in subjection to and depen-
dence on God ; this dependence could not be preserved without a law, nor
that law be kept in reputation without a penalty ; nor would that penalty be
significant without an execution. Every law loseth the nature of a law,
without a penalty ; and the penalty loseth its vigour, without the infliction
of it. How can those laws attain their end, if the transgressions of them
be not punished ? Would not the wickedness of men's hearts be encouraged
by such a kind of uncomely goodness ? and all the threatenings be to no
other end than to engender vain and fruitless fears in the minds of men ?
Is it good for the majesty of God to suffer itself to be trampled on by his
vassals ; to suffer men, by their rebellion, to level his law with the wicked-
ness of their own hearts, and, by impunity, slight his own glory, and encour-
age their disobedience ? Who would give any man, any prince, any father
that should do so, the name of a good governor ? If it were a fruit of divine
goodness to make laws, is it contrary to goodness to support the honour of
them ? It is every whit as I'ational, and as good, to vindicate the honour of
his laws by justice, as at first to settle them by authority ; as much good-
ness to vindicate it from contempt, as at first to enact it. As it is as much
wisdom to preserve a law as at first to frame it, shall his precepts be thought
by him unworthy of a support, that were not thought by him unworthy to
be made ? The same reason of goodness that led him to enjoin them, will
lead him to revenge them. Did evil appear odious to him while he enacted
his law ; and would not his own goodness, as well as his wisdom, appear
odious to him if he did never execute it ? Would it not be a denial of his
own goodness, to be led by the foohsh and corrupt judgment of his creatures,
and slight his own law, because his rebels spurn at it ? Since he valued it
before they could actually contemn it, would he not misjudge his own law
and his own wisdom, discount from the true value of them, condemn his
own acts, censure his precepts as unrighteous, and therefore evil and injuri-
ous, remove the differences between good and evil, look upon vice as
virtue, and wickedness as righteousness, if he thought his commands un-
worthy of a vindication ? How can there be any support to the honour of
his precepts, without sometimes executing the severity of his threatenings ?
And, as to his threatenings of punishment for the breach of his laws, are
they not designed to discourage wickedness, as the promises of reward were
designed to encourage goodness ? Hath he not multiplied the one to scare
men from sin, as well as the other to allure men to obedience ? Is not the
same truth engaged to support the one as well as the other ? And how
could he be abundant in goodness, if he were not abundant in truth ? Both
are linked together, Exod. xxxiv. 6 : if he neglected his truth, he would be
out of love with his own goodness, since it cannot be manifested in per-
forming the promises to the obedient, if it be not also manifested in execut-
ing his threatenings upon the rebellious. Had not God annexed threatenings
to his laws, he would have had no care of his own goodness. The order

Make X. 18.] god's goodness. 301

between God and the creature, wherein the declaration of his goodness con-
sisted, might have been easily broken by his creature ; man would have
freed himself from subjection to God, been unaccountable to him. Had this
consisted with that infinite goodness whereby he loves himself, and loves
his creatures ? As, therefore, the annexing threatenings to his law was a
part of his goodness, the execution of them is so far from being a blemish,
that it is the honour of his goodness. The rewards of obedience, and the
punishment of disobedience, refer to the same end, viz., the due manifesta-
tion of the valuation of his own law, the glorifying his own goodness, which
enjoined so beneficial a law for man, and the support of that goodness in the
creatures, which, by that law, he demands righteously and kindly of them.

Thirdly, Hence it follows, that not to' punish evil would be a want of
goodness to himself. The goodness of God is an indulgent goodness in a
way of wisdom and reason, not a fond goodness in a way of weakness and
folly. Would it not be a weakness, always to bear with the impenitent ?
a want of expressing a goodness to goodness itself ? Would not goodness
have more reason to complain for a want of justice to rescue it, than men
have reason to complain for the exercise of justice in the vindication of it ?
If God established all things in order, with infinite wisdom and goodness,
and God silently behold for ever this order broken, would he not either charge
himself with a want of power, or a want of will, to preserve the marks of his
own goodness ? Would it be a kindness to himself to be careless of the
breaches of his own orders ? His throne would shake, yea, sink from under
him, if justice, whereby he sentenceth, and judgment, whereby he executes
his sentence, were not the supports of it : ' Justice and judgment are the
habitation of thy throne,' Ps. Ixxxix. 14, pDD, the stability or foundation of
thy throne, so Ps. cxii. 2. Man would forget his relation to God, God
would be unknown to be sovereign of the world, were he careless of the
breaches of his own order : Ps. ix. IG, ' The Lord is known by his judgments
which he executes.' Is it not a part of his goodness to preserve the indis-
pensable order between himself and his creatures ? His own sovereignty,
which is good, and the subjection of the creature to him as sovereign, which
is also good : the one would not be maintained in its due place, nor the
other restrained in due limits without punishment. Would it be a goodness
in him to see j^oodness itself trampled upon constantly, without some time
or other appearing for the relief of it ? Is it not a goodness to secure his
own honour, to prevent further evil ? Is it not a goodness to discourage
men by judgments, sometimes from a contempt and ill use of his bounty, as
well as sometimes patiently to bear with them, and wait upon them for a
reformation ? Must God be bad to himself, to be kind to his enemies ?
And shall it be accounted an unkindness and a mark of evil in him not to
sufi'er himself to be always outraged and defied ? The world is wronged by
sin, as well as God is injured by it. How could God be good to himself, if
he righted not his own honour ; or be a good governor of the world, if he
did not sometimes witness against the injuries it receives sometimes from
the works of his hands ? Would he be good to himself, as a God, to be
careless of his own honour ? or good, as the rector of the world, and be
regardless of the world's confusion ?

That God should give an eternal good to that creature that declines its
duty, and despiseth his sovereignty, is not agreeable to the goodness of his
wisdom, or that of his righteousness ; it is a part of God's goodness to love
himself : would he love his sovereignty, if he saw it daily slighted, without
sometimes discovering how much he values the honour of it ? Would he
have any esteem for his own goodness if he beheld it trampled upon, without

302 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

any will to vindicate it ? Doth mercy deserve the name of cruelty because
it pleads against a creature that hath so often abused it, and hath refused to
have any pity exercised towards it, in a righteous and regular way ? Is
sovereignty destitute of goodness because it preserves its honour against one
that would not have it reign over him ? Would he not seem, by such a
regardlessness, to renounce his own essence, undervalue and undermine his
own goodness, if he had not an implacable aversion to whatsoever is contrary
to it ? If men turn grace into wantonness, is it not more reasonable he
should turn his grace into justice ?

All his attributes, which are parts of his goodness, engage him to punish
sin ; without it, his authority would be vilified, his purity stained, his power
derided, his truth disgraced, his justice scorned, his wisdom slighted ; he
would be thought to have dissembled in his laws, and be judged, according
to the rules of reason, to be void of true goodness.

Fourthly, Punishment is not the primary intention of God. It is his
goodness that he hath no mind to punish ; and therefore he hath put a bar
to evil by his prohibitions and threatenings, that he might prevent sin, and
consequently any occasions of severity against his creature.* The principal
intention of God in his law was to encourage goodness, that he might reward
it ; and when, by the commission of evil, God is provoked to punish, and
takes the sword into his hand, he doth not act against the nature of his good-
ness, but against the first intention of his goodness in his precepts, which
was to reward. As a good judge principally intends, in the exercise of his
office, to protect good men from violence, and maintain the honour of the
laws ; yet consequently to punish bad men, without which the protection of
the good would not be secured, nor the honour of the law be supported.
And a good judge, in the exercise of his office, doth principally intend the
encouragement of the good, and wisheth there were no wickedness that might
occasion punishment ; and when he doth sentence a malefactor in order
to the execution of him, he doth not act against the goodness of his
nature, but pursuant to the duty of his place ; but wisheth he had no occa-
sion for such severity. Thus God seems to speak of himself: Isa. xxviii. 21,
he calls the act of his wrath, his ' strange work,' his ' strange act ;' a work
not against his nature, as the governor of the world, but against his first
intention as creator, which was to manifest his goodness. Therefore he
moves with a slow pace in those acts, brings out his judgments with relent-
ings of heart, and seems to cast out his thunderbolts with a trembling hand.
' He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men,' Lam. iii. 33.
And therefore he ' delights not in the death of a sinner,' Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
Not in death as death, in punishment as punishment, but as it reduceth the
sufiering creature to the order of his precept, or reduceth him into order
under his power, or reforms others who are spectators of the punishment
upon a criminal of their own nature. God only hates the sin, not the sin-
ner, f He desires only the destruction of the one, not the other. The
nature of a man doth not displease him, because it is a work of his own
goodness ; but the nature of the sinner displeaseth him, because it is a
work of the sinner's own extravagance. Divine goodness pitcheth not its
hatred primarily upon the sinner, but upon the sin ; but since he cannot
punish the sin without punishing the subject to which it cleaves, the sinner
falls under his lash. Who ever regards a good judge as an enemy to the
malefactor, but as an enemy to his crime, when he doth sentence and exe-
cute him ?

* Zarnovecius, De Satisfact. part i. cap. i. p. 3, 4.
t Suarez, vol. i. he Deo, lib. iii. cap. 7, p. 146.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 303

Fifthly, Judgments in the world have a goodness in them, therefore they
are no impeachments of the goodness of God.

1st, A goodness in their prepai-ations. He sends not judgments without
giving warnings ; his justice is so far from extinguishing his goodness, that
his goodness rather shines out in the preparations of his justice. He gives
men time, and sends them messengers to persuade them to another temper
of mind, that he may change his hand, and exercise his liberality, where he
threatened his severity. When the heathen had presages of some evil upon
their persons or countries, they took them for invitations to repentance,
excited themselves to many acts of devotion, implored his favour, and often
experimented it. The Ninevites, upon the proclamation of the destruction
of their city by Jonah, fell to petitioning him ; whereby they signified that
they thought him good, though he were just, and more prone to pity than
severity ; and their humble carriage caused the arrows he had ready against
them to drop out of his hands, Jonah iii. 9, 10. When he brandisheth
his sword, he wishes for some to stand in that gap to mollify his anger, that
he might not strike the fatal blow : Ezek. xxii. 30, ' I sought for a man
among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before
me in the land, that I should not destroy it.' He was desirous that his
creatures might be in a capacity to receive the marks of his bounty.* This
he signified not obscurely to Moses, Exod. xxxii. 10, when he spoke to him
to let him alone, that his anger might wax hot against the people, after they
had made a golden calf and worshipped it. * Let me alone,' said God : not
that Moses restrained him, saith Chrysostom, who spake nothing to him, but
stood silent before him, and knew nothing of the people's idolatry ; but God
would give him an occasion of praying for them, that he might exercise his
mercy towards them ; yet in such a manner, that the people beincf struck
with a sense of their crime, and the horror of divine justice, they miaht be
amended for the future ; when they should understand that their death was
not averted by their own merit or intercession, but by Moses his patronage
of them, and pleading for them; as we see sometimes masters and fathers
angry with their servants and children, and preparing themselves to punish
them, but secretly wish some friend to intercede for them, and take them
out of their hands. There is a goodness shining in the preparation of his
judgments.

2dly, A goodness in the execution of them. They are good, as they
shew God disaffected to evil, and conduce to the glory of his holiness, and
deter others from presumptuous sins : Lev. x. 3, ' I will be glorified in all
that draw near unto me ;' in his judgment upon Nadab and Abihu, the sons
of Aaron, for offering strange fire.

By them God preserves the excellent footsteps of his own goodness in his
creation and his law, and curbs the licentiousness of men, and contains
them within the bounds of their duty. ' Thy judgments are good,' saith
the psalmist, Ps. cxix. 39, /. e. thy judicial proceedings upon the
wicked ; for he desires God there to turn 'away, by some signal act, the
reproach the wicked cast upon him. Can there be anything more miserable
than to live in a world full of wickedness, and void of the marks of divine
goodness and justice to repress it ? Were there not judgments in the world,
men would forget God, be insensible of his government of the world, neglect
the exercises of natural and Christian duties ; religion would be at its last
gasp, and expire among them, and men would pretend to break God's
precepts by God's authority. Are they not good, then, as they restrain the
creature from further evils ? afl'right others from the same crimes which
* Crcssel, Antholog. Decad. ii. p. 162.

304 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

they were inclinable to commit ? He strikes some, to reform others that
are spectators ; as Apollonius tamed pigeons by beating dogs before them.
Punishments are God's gracious warnings to others, not to venture upon
those crimes which they see attended with such judgments. The censers of
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were to be wrought into plates for a covering
of the altar, to abide there as a memento to others, not to appi'oach to the
exercise of the priestly office, without an authoritative call from God, Num.
xvi. 38, 40 ; and those judgments exercised in the former ages of the world,
were intended by divine goodness for warnings, even in evangelical times.
Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, to prevent men from apostasy.
That rise Christ himself makes of it, in the exhortation against turning
back, Luke xvii. 32, 33. And Ps. Iviii. 10, ' The righteous shall wash his
feet in the blood of the wicked.' When God shall drench his sword in the
blood of the wicked, the righteous shall take occasion from thence to purify
themselves, and reform their ways, and look to the paths of their feet.
Would not impunity be hurtful to the world, and men receive encoui'age-
ment to sin, if severities sometimes did not bridle them from the practice of
their inclinations ? Sometimes the sinner himself is reformed, and some-
times removed from being an example to others. Though thunder be an
affrighting noise, and lightning a scaring flash, yet they have a liberal
goodness in them, in shattering and consuming those contagious vapours
which burden and infect the air, and thereby render it more clear and
healthful.

Again, there are few acts of divine justice upon a people, but are, in the
very execution of them, attended with demonstrations of his goodness to
others. He is a protector of his own, while he is a revenger on his enemies ;
when he rides upon his horses in anger against some, his chariots are
' chariots of salvation ' to others, Hab. iii. 8. Terror makes way for salva-
tion : the overthrow of Pharaoh, and the strength of his nation, completed
the deliverance of the Israelites. Had not the Egyptians met with their
destruction, the Israelites had unavoidably met with their ruin, against all
the promises God had made to them, and to the defamation of his former
justice in the former plagues upon their oppressors. The death of Herod
was the security of Peter, and the rest of the maHced Christians. The
gracious deliverance of good men is often occasioned by some severe stroke
upon some eminent persecutor; the destruction of the oppressor is the
rescue of the innocent.

Again, where is there a judgment but leaves more criminals behind
than it sweeps away, that deserved to be involved in the same fate with the
rest ? More Egyptians were left behind, to possess and enjoy the goodness
of their fruitful land, than they were that were hurried into another world by
the overflowing waves. Is not this a mark of goodness as well as severity ?

Again, is it not a goodness in him not to pour out judgments according
to the greatness of his power ; to go gradually to work with those whom he
might in a moment blow to destruction with one breath of his mouth ?

Again, he sometimes exerciseth judgments upon some, to form a new
generation for himself ; he destroyed an old world, to raise a new one more
righteous — as a man pulls down his own buildings, to erect a sounder and
more stately fabric.

To sum up what hath been said in this particular : How could God be a
friend to goodness, if he were not an enemy to evil ? How could he shew
his enmity to evil, without revenging the abuse and contempt of his good-
ness ? God would rather have the repentance of a sinner than his punish-
ment ; but the sinner would rather expose himself to the severest frowns of

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 805

God, than pursue those methods wherein he hath settled the conveyances
of his kindness. ' You will not come to me, that you might have life,' saith
Christ. How is eternity of punishment inconsistent with the goodness of
God ? Nay, how can God be good without it ? If wickedness always
remain in the nature of man, is it not fit the rod should always remain on
the back of man ? Is it a want of goodness that keeps an incorrigible
ofi"ender in chains, in a bridewell ? While sin remains, it is fit it should be
punished. Would not God else be an enemy to his own goodness, and
shew favour to that which doth abuse it, and is contrary to it ? He hath
threatened eternal flames to sinners, that he might the more strongly excite
them to a reformation of their ways, and a practice of his precepts.

In those threatenings he hath manifested his goodness ; and can it be
bad in him to defend what his goodness hath commanded, and execute what
his goodness hath threatened ? His truth is also a part of his goodness ;
for it is nothing but his goodness performing that which it obliged him to
do. That is the first thing ; severe judgments in the world are no impeach-
ments of his goodness.

Secondly, The afflictions God inflicts upon his servants, are no violations
of his goodness. Sometimes God afflicts men for their temporal and eternal
good ; for the good of their grace in order to the good of their glory, which
is a more excellent good than afflictions can be an evil. The heathens
reflected upon Ulysses his hardship, as a mark of Jupiter's goodness and
love to him, that his virtue might be more conspicuous. By strong perse-
cutions brought upon the church, her lethargy is cured, her chafi" purged,
the glorious fruit of the gospel brought forth in the lives of her children ;
the number of her proselytes multiply, and the strength of her weak ones is
increased, by the testimonies of courage and constancy which the stronger
present to them in their sufierings. Do those good effects speak a want of
goodness in God, who brings them into this condition ? By those he cures
his people of their corruptions, and promotes their glory by giving them the
honour of sufi'ering for the truth, and raiseth their spirits to a divine pitch.
The Epistles of Paul to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, wrote
by him while he was in Nero's chains, seem to have a higher strain than
some of those he wrote when he was at liberty.

As for afflictions, they are marks of a greater measure of fatherly good-
ness than he discovers to those that live in an uninterrupted prosperity, who
are not dignified with that glorious title of sons, as those are that he
chasteneth, Heb, xii. 6, 7. Can any question the goodness of the father that
corrects his child to prevent his vice and ruin, and breed him up to virtue
and honour ? It would be a cruelty in a father leaving his child without
chastisement, to leave him to that misery an ill education would reduce him
to. ' God judges us that we might not be condemned with the world,' 1 Cor.
xi. 32. Is it not a greater goodness to separate us from the world to happi-
ness by his scourge, than to leave us to the condemnation of the world for
our sins ? Is it not a greater goodness to make us smart here, than to see
us scorched hereafter ? As he is our shepherd, it is no part of his enmity
or ill will to us, to make us feel sometimes the weight of his shepherd's
crook, to reduce us from our straggling. The ' visiting our transgressions
with rods, and our iniquities with stripes,' is one of the articles of the cove-
nant of grace, wherein the greatest lustre of his goodness appears, Ps.
Ixxxix. 32, 33. The advantage and gain of our afflictions is a greater testi-
mony of his goodness to us, than the pain can be of his unkindness ; the
smart is well recompensed by the accession of clearer graces.

It is rather a high mark of his goodness, than an argument for the want

VOL. II. u

306 charnock's woeks. [Mark X. 18.

of it, that he treats us as his children, and will not suffer us to run into that
destruction we are more ambitious of, than the happiness he hath prepared
for us, and by afflictions he fits us for the partaking of, by imparting his
holiness together with the inflicting his rod, Heb. xii. 10. That is the
third thing, God is good.

IV. The fourth thing is, the manifestation of this goodness in creation,
redemption, and providence.

1. In creation. This is apparent from what hath been said before, that
no other attribute could be the motive of his creating, but his goodness.
His goodness was the cause that he made anything, and his wisdom was the
cause that he made everything in order and harmony ; he pronounced every-
thing good, i. e. such as became his goodness to bring forth into being ; and
rested in them more as they were stamps of his goodness, than as they were
marks of his power, or beams of his wisdom ; and if all creatures were able
to answer to this question, what that was which created them, the answer
would be, almighty power, but employed by the motion of infinite good-
ness.* All the varieties of creatures are so many apparitions of this
goodness. Though God be one, yet he cannot appear as a God, but in
variety. As the greatness of power is not manifest but in variety of
works, and an acute understanding not discovered but in variety of rea-
sonings, so an infinite goodness is not so apparent as in variety of communi-
cations.

(1.) The creation proceeds from goodness. It is the goodness of God
to extract such multitude of things from the depths of nothing. Because God
is good, things have a being. If he had not been good, nothing could have
been good, nothing could have imparted that which it possessed not, nothing
but goodness could have communicated to things an excellency, which be-
fore they wanted. Being is much more excellent than nothing. By this
goodness therefore the whole creation was brought out of the dark womb
of nothing ; this formed their natures, this beautified them with several
ornaments and perfections, whereby everything was enabled to act for the
good of the common world. God did not create things because he was a
living being, but because he was a good being. No creature brought forth
anything in the world merely because it is, but because it is good, and by a
communicated goodness fitted for such a production. If God had been the
creating principle of things, only as he was a living being, or as he was an
understapding being, then all things should have partaken of life and under-
standing, because all things were to bear some characters of the Deity upon
them. If by understanding solely God were the Creator of all things, all
things should have borne the mark of the Deity upon them, and should have
been more or less understanding ; but he created things as he was good,
and by goodness he renders all things more or less like himself; hence
everything is accounted more noble, not in regard of its being, hut in regard
of the beneficialness of its nature. The being of things was not the end of
God in creating, but the goodness of their being. God did not rest from his
works, because they were his works, i. e. because they had a heinrj, but be-
cause they had a good being, Gen. i. 31 ; because they were naturally useful
to the universe. Nothing was more pleasing to him, than to behold those
shadows and copies of his own goodness in his works.

(2.) Creation was the first act of goodness without himself. When he
was alone from eternity, he contented himself with himself, abounding in
his own blessedness, delighting in that abundance. f He was incomprehen-
* Cusan, p. 228 t Petav. Theolog. Dogmat. torn. i. p. 402.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 307

sively* rich in the possession of an unstained felicity. This creation was
the first efflux of his goodness without himself, for the work of creation
cannot be called a work of mercy ;t mercy supposeth a'.creature miserable,
but that which hath no being is subject to no misery ; for to be miserable,
supposeth a nature in being, and deprived of that good which belongs to
the pleasure and felicity of nature ; but since there was no being, there
could be no misery. The creation, therefore, was not an act of mercy,
but an act of sole goodness ; and therefore it was the speech of an
heathen, that when God first set upon the creation of the world, he trans-
formed himself into love and goodness : 'E/5 ioura fjbiraj3Xrii)ai rhv kov /asX-
XovTa briiuo-jiyiTv.X This led forth and animated his power, the first moment
it drew the universe out of the womb of nothing. And,

(3.) There is not one creature but hath a character of his goodness. The
whole world is a map to represent, and a herald to proclaim, this perfection.
It is as difficult not to see something of it in every creature with the eye of
our minds, as it is not to see the beams of the shining sun with those of
our bodies. ' He is good to all,' Ps. cxlv. 9, he therefore is good in all ; not
a drop of the creation, but is a drop of his goodness.

These are the colours worn upon the heads of every creature. As in every
spark the light of the fire is manifested, so doth every grain of the crea-
tion wear the visible badges of this perfection. In all the lights, the Father
of lights hath made the riches of goodness apparent ; no creature is silent
in it, it is legible to all nations in every work of his hands ; that as it is said
of Christ, Ps. xl. 7, ' In the volume of thy book it is written of me ;' in
the volume of the book of the Scripture it is written of me, and my good-
ness in redemption ; so it may be said of God in the volume of the book
of the creature, it is written of me and my goodness in creation. Every
creature is a page in this book, whose * line is gone through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world,' Ps. xix. 4, though indeed the
less goodness in some is obscured by the more resplendent goodness he
hath imparted to others. What an admirable piece of goodness is it to
communicate life to a fly ! How should we stand gazing upon it, till we turn
our eye inwards, and view our own frame, which is much more ravishing !

But let us see the goodness of God in the creation of man.

(1.) In the. being and nature of man. God hath with a liberal hand con-
ferred upon every creature the best being it was capable of, in that station
and order, and conducing to that end and use in the world he intended it
for ; but when you have run over all the measures of goodness God hath
poured forth upon other creatures, you will find a greater fulness of it in the
nature of man, whom he hath placed in a more sublime condition, and en-
dued with choicer prerogatives than other creatures. He was made but
' little lower than the angels,' and much more loftily * crowned with glory
and honour ' than other creatures, Ps. viii. 5. Had it not been for divine
goodness, this excellent creature had lain wrapped up in the abyss of nothing ;
or, if he had called it out of nothing, there might have been less of skill
and less of goodness displayed in the forming of it, and a lesser kind of
being imparted to it, than what he hath conferred.

[1.] How much of goodness is visible in his body ? God drew out some
part of the dust of the ground, and copied out this perfection, as well as
that of his power, on that mean matter, by erecting it into the form of man,
quickening that earth by the inspiration of a living soul, Gen. ii. 7. Of
this matter he composed an excellent body in regard of the majesty of the
* Qu. ' incomprehensibly ?' — Ed. % Fherecydes.

t Lessius do Perfect, div. p. 100.

808 charnook's works. [Mark X. 18.

face, erectness of his stature, and grace of every part. How neatly hath he
wrought this tabernacle of clay, this earthly house, as the apostle calls it !
2 Cor. V. 1 ; a ' curious wrought' piece of needle-work, a comely artifice,
Ps. cxxxix. 15 ; an embroidered case for an harmonious lute. What variety
of members, with a due proportion, without confusion, beautiful to sight,
excellent for use, powerful for strength ! It hath eyes to conduct its motion,
to serve in matter for the food and delight of the understanding ; ears to let
in the pleasure of sounds, to convey intelligence of the afiairs of the world,
and the counsels of heaven to a more noble mind ; it hath a tongue to ex-
press and sound forth what the learned inhabitant in it thinks ; and hands
to act what the inward counsellor directs ; and feet to support the fabric.
It is tempered with a kindly heat and an oily moisture for motion, and
endued with conveyances for air to qualify the fury of the heat, and nourish-
ment to supply the decays of moisture. It is a cabinet fitted by divine
goodness for the enclosing a rich jewel ; a palace made of dust, to lodge in
it the viceroy of the world ; an instrument disposed for the operations of
the nobler soul, which he intended to unite to that refined matter. What is
there in the situation of every part, in the proportion of every member, in
the usefulness of every limb and string to the offices of the bodj", and service
of the soul — what is there in the whole structure, that doth not inform us
of the goodness of God ?

[2.] But what is this to that goodness which shines in the nature of the
soul ? Who can express the wonders of that comeliness that is wrapped
up in this mask of clay ? A soul endued with a clearness of understanding
and freedom of will ; faculties no sooner framed, but they were able to pro-
duce the operations they were intended for ; a soul that excelled the whole
world, that comprehended the whole creation ; a soul that evidenced the
extent of its skill, in giving names to all that variety of creatures, which had
issued out of the hand of divine power. Gen. ii. 19 ; a soul able to discover
the nature of other creatures, and manage and conduct their motions. In
the ruins of a palace we may see the curiosity displayed, and the cost ex-
pended in the building of it ; in the ruins of this fallen structure, we still
find it capable of a mighty knowledge, a reason able to regulate affairs, govern
states, order more mighty and massy creatures, find out witty inventions.
There is still an understanding to irradiate the other faculties, a mind to
contemplate its own Creator, a judgment to discern the differences between
good and evil, vice and virtue, which the goodness of God bath not granted
to any lower creature. These excellent faculties, together with the power
of self-reflection, and the swiftness of the mind in running over the things
of the creation, are astonishing gleams of the vast goodness of that divine
hand which ennobled this frame. To the other creatures of this world, God
had given out some small mites from his treasury ; but in the perfections of
man, he hath opened the more secret parts of his exchequer, and liberally
bestowed those doles, which he hath not expended upon the other creatures
on earth.

[3.] Besides this, he did not only make man so noble a creature in his
frame, but he made him after his own image in holiness. He imparted to
him a spark of his own comeliness, in order to a communion with himself
in happiness, had man stood his ground in his trial, and used those faculties
well, which had been the gift of his bountiful Creator. He made man after
his image, after his own image, Gen. i. 26, 27 ; that as a coin bears the
image of the prince, so did the soul of man the image of God ; not the image
of angels, though the speech be in the plural number, ' Let us make man.'
It is not to a creature, but to a creator ; let us that are his makers, make

Makk X. 18.] god's goodness. 309

him in the image of his makers. God created man, angels did not create
him ; God created man in his own image, not therefore in the image of
angels. The nature of God, and the nature of angels are not the same.
Where in the whole Scripture is man said to be made after the image of
angels ? God made man not in the image of angels, to be conformed to
them as his prototype, but in the image of the blessed God, to be conformed
to the divine nature. That as he was conformed to the image of his holi-
ness, he might also partake of the image of his blessedness, which without it
could not be attained. For as the feUcity of God could not be clear without
an unspotted hoHness, so neither can there be a glorious happiness without
purity in the creature ; this God provided for in his creation of man, giving
him such accomplishments in those two excellent pieces of soul and body,
that nothing was wanting to him but his own will, to instate him in an in-
variable felicity. He was possessed with such a nature by the hand of
divine goodness, such a loftiness of understanding, and purity of faculties,
that he might have been for ever happy as well as the standing angels ; and
he was placed in such a condition, that moved the envy of fallen spirits ;
he had as much grace bestowed upon him, as was proportionable to that
covenant God then made with him, the tenor of which was, that his life
should continue so long as his obedience, and his happiness endure so
long as his integrity ; and as God by creation had given him an integrity
of nature, so he had given him a power to persist in it, if he would. Herein
is the goodness of God displayed, that he made man after his own image.

(2.) As to the life of man in this world, God by an immense goodness
copied out in him the whole creation, and made him an abridgment of the
higher and lower world ; a little world in a greater one ; the link of the
two worlds, of heaven and earth, as the spiritual and corporeal natures are
united in him, the earth in the dust of his body, and the heavens in the
crystal of his soul. He hath the upper springs of the life of angels in his
reason, and the nether springs of the life of animals in his sense. God
displayed those virtues in man, which he had discovered in the rest of the
lower creation ; but besides the communication which he had with earth in
his nature, God gave him a participation with heaven in his spirit. A
mere bodily being he hath given to the heavens, earth, elements ; a vegeta-
tive life, or a hfe of growth, he hath vouchsafed to the plants "of the ground.
He hath stretched out his liberality more to animals and beasts by giving
them sense. All these hath his goodness linked in man, being, life, sense,
with a richer dole than any of those creatures have received in a rational
intellectual life, whereby he approacheth to the nature of angels. This
some of the Jews understood. Gen. ii. 7, God ' breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life, and man became a living soul,' □'•''11 breath of lives in the
Hebrew ; not one sort of life, but that variety of lives which he had imparted
to other creatures. All the perfections scattered in other creatures do
unitedly meet in man ; so that Philo might well call him every creature, the
model of the whole creation ; his soul is heaven, and his body is earth.*
So that the immensity of his goodness to man, is as great as all that good-
ness you behold in sensitive and intelligible things.

(3.) All this was free goodness. God eternally possessed his own felicity
in himself, and had no need of the existence of anything without himself for
his satisfaction. Man before his being could have no good qualities, to invite
God to make him so excellent a fabric ; for being nothing, he was as unable
to allure and merit, as to bring himself into being ; nay, he created a mul-
titude of men, who he foresaw would behave themselves in as ungrateful a
* Eugubin. lib. v. cap. ix.

810 charnock's woeks. [Maek X. 18.

manner as if they had not been his creatures, but had bestowed that rich
variety upon themselves without the hand of a superior benefactor.

How great is this goodness, that hath made us models of the whole crea-
tion, tied together heaven and earth in our nature, when he might have
ranked us among the lower creatures of the earth, made us mere bodies as
the stones, or mere animals as the brutes, and denied us those capacious
souls, whereby we might both know him and enjoy him ! What could man
have been more, unless he had been the original, which was impossible ?
He could not be greater than to be an image of the Deity, an epitome of the
whole creation. Well may we cry out with the psalmist, Ps. viii. 1,4, '0
Lord ourj Lord, how excellent is thy name,' the name of thy goodness ' in
all the earth !' how more particularly in man : ' What is man, that thou art
mindful of him ?' What is a httle clod of earth and dust, that thou shouldst
ennoble him with so rich a nature, and engrave upon him such characters of
thy immense being ?

(4.) The goodness of God appears in the conveniences he provided for,
and gave to man. As God gave him a being morally perfect in regard of
righteousness, so he gave him a being naturally perfect in regard of delight-
ful conveniences, which was the fruit of excellent goodness ; since there was
no quality in man to invite God to provide him^ so rich a world, nor to
bestow upon him so comely a being.

[1.] The world was made for man. Since angels have not need of any-
thing in this world, and are above the conveniences of earth and air, it will
follow, that man being the noblest creature on the earth, was the more im-
mediate end of the visible creation. All inferior things are made to be
subservient to those that have a more excellent prerogative of nature, and
therefore all things for man, who exceeds all the rest in dignity. As man
■was made for the honour of God, so the world was made for the support and
delight of man, in order to his performing the service due from him to God.
The empire God settled man in as his lieutenant over the works of his
hands, when he gave him possession of paradise, is a clear manifestation of
it. God put all things under his feet, and gave him a deputed dominion
over the rest of the creatures, under himself as the absolute sovereign :
Ps. viii. 6-8, ' Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy
hands ; thouliast put all things under his feet : all sheep and oxen, yea,
and the beasts of the field ; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, yea,
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.' What less is wit-
nessed to by the calamity all creatures were subjected to by the corrup-
tion of man's nature ? Then was the earth cursed, and a black cloud fluno
upon the beauty of the creation, and the strength and vigour of it languisheth
to this day under the curse of God, Gen. iii. 17, 18, and ' groans under that
vanity' the sin of man subjected it to, Eom. viii. 20, 22. The treasons of
man against God brought misery upon that which was framed for the use of
man ; as when the majesty of a prince is violated by the treason and
rebellion of his subjects, all that which belongs to them, and was before
the free gift of the prince to them, is forfeited; their habitation, palaces,
cattle, all that belongs to them, bear the marks of his sovereign fury.
Had not the delicacies of the earth been made for the use of man, they had
not fallen under the indignation of God upon the sin of man.

God crowned the earth with his goodness to gratify man, gave man a
right to serve himself of the delightful creatures he had provided. Gen.
i. 28-30 ; yea, and after man had forfeited all by sin, and God had washed
again the creature in a deluge, he renews the creation, and delivers it again
into the hand of man, binding all creatures to pay a respect to him, and

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 311

recognise him as their lord, either spontaneously or by force, Gen. ix. 2, 3,
and commissions them all to fill the heart of man with ' food and gladness.'
And he loves all creatures as they conduce to the good of, and are service-
able to, his prime creature which he set up for his own glory ; and there-
fore when he loves a person he loves what belongs to him. He takes care
of Jacob and his cattle ; of penitent Nineveh and their cattle, Jonah iv. 11 ;
as when he sends judgments upon men he destroys their goods.

[2.] God richly furnished the world for man. He did not only erect a
stately palace for"his habitation, but provided all kind of furniture as a mark
of his goodness for the entertainment of his creature man. He arched over
his habitation with a bespangled heaven, and floored it with a solid earth, and
spread a curious wrought tapestry upon the ground where he was to tread,
and seemed to sweep all the rubbish of the chaos to the two uninhabitable
poles. When at the fii-st creation of the matter the waters covered the
earth, and rendered it uninhabitable for man, God drained them into the
proper channels he had founded for them, and set a bound that they might
not pass over, they they turn not again to cover the earth. Gen. i. 9.
They fled and hasted away to their proper stations, Ps. civ. 7-9, as_ if
they were ambitious to deny their own nature, and content themselves with
an imprisonment, for the convenient habitation of him who was to be
appointed lord of the world. He hath set up standing lights in the heaven
to direct our motion, and to regulate the seasons ; the sun was created that
man might see to ' go forth to his labour,' Ps. civ. 22, 23 ; both sun and
moon, though set in the heaven, were formed to 'give light' on the earth,
Gen. i. 15, 17. The air is his aviary, the sea and rivers his fish-ponds,
the valleys his granary, the mountains his magazine. The first aftbrd man
creatures for nourishment, the other metals for perfection ; the animals
were created for the support of the life of man, the herbs of the ground were
provided for the maintenance of their lives, and gentle dews and moistening
showers, and in some places slimy floods, appointed to render the earth
fruitful, and capable to offer to man and beast what was fit for their nourish-
ment. He hath peopled every element with a variety of creatures both for
necessity and delight ; all furnished with useful qualities for the service of
man. There is not the most despicable thing in the whole creation, but it
is endued with a nature to contribute something for our welfare, either as
food to nourish us when we are healthful, or as medicine to cure us when
we are distempered, or as a garment to clothe us when we are naked, and
arm us against the cold of the seasons, or as a refreshment when we are
weary, or as a deHght when we are sad ; all serve for necessity or ornament,
either to spread our table, beautify our dwellings, furnish our closets, or
store our wardrobes : Ps. civ. 24, ' The whole earth is full of his riches.'
Nothing but by the rich goodness of God is exquisitely accommodated in the
numerous breed of things, immediately or mediately, for the use of man ;
all in the issue conspire together to render the world a delightful residence
for man. And therefore all the living creatures were brought by God to
attend upon man after his creation, to receive a mark of his dominion over
them by the imposition of their names. Gen. ii. 19, 20. He did not only
give variety of sense to man, but provided variety of delightful objects m
the world for every sense : the beauties of light and colours for our eye, the
harmony of sounds for our ear, the fragrancy of odours for our nostrils, and
a delicious sweetness for our palates ; some have qualities to pleasure all,
everything a quality to pleasure one or other. He doth not only present
those things to our view, as rich men do in ostentation their goods ; he
makes us the enjoyers as well as the spectators, and gives us the use as

312 chabnock's works. [Maek X. 18.

well as the sight, and therefore he hath not only given us the sight, but the
knowledge of them. He hath set up a sun in the heavens to expose their
outward beauty and conveniences to our sight, and the candle of the Lord is
in us to expose their inward qualities and conveniences to our knowledge,
that we might serve ourselves of and rejoice in all his furniture wherewith
he hath garnished the world, and have wherewithal to employ the inquisi-
tiveness of our reason, as well as gi-atify the pleasure of our sense. And
particularly, God provided for man a delightful mansion-house, a place of
more special beauty and curiosity, the garden of Eden, a delightful paradise,
a model of the beauties and pleasures of another world, wherein he had
placed whatsoever might contribute to the felicity of a rational and animal
life, the life of a creature composed of mire and dust, of sense and reason.
Gen. ii. 9. Besides the other delicacies consigned in that place to the use
of man, there was a tree of life provided to maintain his being, and nothing
denied in the whole compass of that territory but one tree, that of the know-
ledge of good and evil, which was no mark of an ill will in his Creator to
him, but a reserve of God's absolute sovereignty, and a trial of man's
voluntary obedience. What blur was it to the goodness of God, to reserve
one tree for his own propriety, when he had given to man in all the rest
such numerous marks of his rich bounty and goodness ? What Israel after
man's fall enjoyed sensibly, Nehemiah calls ' great goodness,' Neh. ix. 25.
How inexpressible, then, was that goodness manifested to innocent man, when
so small a part of it indulged to the Israehtes, after the curse upon the
ground, is called, as truly it merits, such great goodness ! How can we
pass through any part of this great city, and cast our eyes upon the well
furnished shops, stored with all kinds of commodities, without reflections
upon this goodness of God, starting up before our eyes in such varieties,
and plainly telling us, that he hath accommodated all things for our use,
suited things both to supply our need, content a reasonable curiosity, and
delight us in our aims at, and passage to, our supreme end !

[3.] The goodness of God appears in the laws he hath given to man, the
covenant he made with him. It had not been agreeable to the goodness of
God to let a creature, governable by law, be without a law to regulate him ;
his goodness then, which had broke forth in the creation, had suffered an
eclipse and obscurity in his government. As infinite goodness was the
motive to create, so infinite goodness was the motive of his government.
And this appears.

First, In the fitting the law to the nature of man. It was rather below
than above his strength ; he had an integrity in his nature to answer the
righteousness of the precept : Eccles. vii. 29, ' God created man upright ;'
his nature was suited to the law, and the law to his nature ; it was not
above his understanding to know it, nor his will to embrace it, nor his
passions to be regulated by it. The law and his nature were like two exact
straight lines, touching one another in every part when joined together.
God exacted no more by his law than what was written by nature in his
heart. He had a knowledge, by creation, to observe the law of his creation,
and he fell not for want of a righteousness in his nature. He was enabled
for more than was commanded him, but wilfully indisposed to less than he
was able to perform. The precepts were easy ; not only becoming the
authority of a sovereign to exact, but the goodness of a father to demand,
and the ingenuity of a creature and a son to pay : 1 John v. 3, ' His com-
mands are not grievous ; ' the observance of them had filled the spirit of
man with an extraordinary contentment. It had been no less a pleasure,
and a delightful satisfaction, to have kept the law in a created state, than it

Mabk X. 18.] god's goodness. 313

is to keep it in some measure in a renewed state. The renewed nature
finds a suitableness in the law to kindle a delight, Ps. i. 2. It could not
then have anywise shook the nature of an upright creature, nor have been a
burden too heavy for his shoulders to bear. Though he had not a grace
given him above nature, yet he had not a law given him that surmounted
bis nature. It did not exceed his created strength, and was suited to the
dignity and nobility of a rational nature. It was a just law, Rom. vii. 12,
and therefore not above the nature of the subject that was bound to obey it;
and had it been impossible to be observed, it had been unrighteous to be
enacted. It had not been a matter of divine praise ; and that seven times a
day, as it is Ps. cxix. 164, ' Seven times a day do I praise thee, because
of thy righteous judgments,' The law was so righteous that Adam had
every whit as much reason to bless God in his innocence, for the righteous-
ness of it, as David had, with the relics of enmity against it. His goodness
shines so much in his law as merits our praise of him, as he is a sovereign
lawgiver, as well as a gracious benefactor in the imparting to us a being.

Secondhj, In fitting it for the happiness of man, for the satisfaction of
his soul, which finds a ' reward in ' the very act of ' keeping it.' ' Great
peace ' in the ' loving it,' Ps. cxix. 1G5, for the preservation of human
society, wherein consists the eternal felicity of man. It had been inconsis-
tent with divine goodness to enjoin man anything that should be oppressive
and uncomfortable. Bitterness cannot come from that which is altogether
sweet ; goodness would not have obliged the creature to anything but what
is not only free from damaging him, but wholly conducing to his welfare,
and perfective of his nature. Infinite wisdom could not order anything but
what was agreeable to infinite goodness. As his laws are the most rational,
as being the contrivance of infinite wisdom, so they are the best, as being
the contrivance of infinite goodness. His laws are not only the acts of his
sovereign authority, but the eflluxes of his loving-kindness, and the con-
ductors of man to an enjoyment of a greater bounty. He minds as well the
promotion of his creatures' felicity, as the asserting his own authority ; as
good princes makes laws for their subjects' benefit, as well as their own
honour. What was said of a more difficult and burdensome law, long after
man's fall, may much more be said of the easy law of nature in the state of
man's innocence, that it was for our good, Deut. x. 12, 13. He never
pleaded with the IsraeUtes for the observation of his commands upon the
account of his authority, so much as upon the score of their benefit by
them, Deut. iv. 40.

And when his precepts were broken, he seems sometimes to be more
grieved for men's impairing their own felicity by it, than for their violating
his authority: Isa, xlviii. 18, ' 0 that thou hadst hearkened to my com-
mandments ! then had thy peace been as a river.' Goodness cannot pre-
scribe a thing prejudicial ; whatsoever it enjoins is beneficial to the spiritual
and eternal happiness of the rational creature ; this was both the design of
the law given and the end of the law. Christ in his answer to the young
man's question refers him to the moral law, which was the law of nature in
Adam, as that whereby eternal life was to be gained, which evideuceth that,
when the law was first given as the covenant of works, it was for the happi-
ness of man ; and the end of giving it was, that man might have eternal life
by it ; there would else be no strength or truth in that answer of Christ to
that ruler. And therefore Stephen calls the law given by Moses, which was
the same with the law of nature in Adam, Acts vii. 38, ' the living
oracles.' He enjoined men's services to them, not simply for his own glory,
but his glory in men's welfare. As if there were any being better than him-

314 chahnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

self, his goodness and righteousness would guide him to love that hotter
than himself, because it is good and righteous to love that best which is most
amiable ; so if there were any that could do us more good, and shower down
more happiness upon us than himself, he would be content we should obey
that as sovereign, and steer our course according to his laws : 1 Kings
xviii. 21, ' If God be God, follow him : but if Baal, then follow him.' If
the observance of the precepts of Baal be more beneficial to you, if you can
advance your nature by his service, and gain a more mighty crown of happi-
ness than by mine, follow him with all my heart. I never intended to enjoin
you anything to impair, but increase your happiness. The chief design of
God, in his law, is the happiness of the subject ; and obedience is intended
by him, as a means for the attaining of happiness, as well as preserving his
own sovereignty. This is the reason why he wished that Israel had walked
in his ways : ' That their time might have endured for ever,' Ps. Ixxxi. 13-16.
And by the same reason this was his intendment in his law given to man,
and his covenant made with man at the creation, that he might be fed
with the finest part of his bounty, and be satisfied with honey out of the
eternal Rock of ages, to paraphrase his expression there. The goodness of
God appears, further,

Thirdlij, In engaging man to obedience by promises and threatenings. A
threatening is only mentioned, Gen. ii. 17, but a promise is implied. If
eternal death were fixed for transgression, eternal life was thereby designed
for obedience. And that it was so, the answer of Christ to the ruler evi-
denceth that the first intendment of the precept was the eternal life of the
subject, ordered to obey it.

First, God might have acted, in settling his law, only as a sovereign.
Though he might have dealt with man upon the score of his absolute
dominion over him as his creature, and signified his pleasure upon the right of
his sovereignty, threatening only a penalty if man transgressed, without the
promising a bountiful acknowledgment of his obedience by a reward as a
benefactor, yet he would treat with man in gentle methods, and rule him
in a tract of sweetness as well as sovereignty ; he would preserve the rights
of his dominion in the authority of his commands, and honour the con-
descensions of his goodness in the allurements of a promise. He that
might have solely demanded a compliance with his will, would kindly article
with him, to oblige him to observe him, out of love to himself as well as
duty to his Creator ; that he might have both the interest of avoiding the
threatened evil to affright him, and the interest of attaining the promised
good to allure him to obedience. How doth he value the title of benefactor
above that of a Lord, when he so kindly solicits, as well as commands, and
engageth to reward that obedience which he might have absolutely claimed
as his due, by enforcing fears of the severest penalty ! His sovereignty
seems to stoop below itself for the elevation of his goodness ; and he is
pleased to have his kindness more taken notice of than his authority.
Nothing imported more condescension than his bringing forth his law in
the nature of a covenant, whereby he seems to humble himself, and veil his
superiority, to treat with man as his equal, that the very manner of his
treatment might oblige him, in the richest promises he made to draw him,
and the startling threatenings he pronounced to link him to his obedience.
And therefore it is observable, that when, after the transgression of Adam,
God comes to deal with him, he doth not do it in that thundering rigour
which might have been expected from an enraged sovereign, but in a gentle
examination: Gen. iii. 11, ' Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldst not eat ? ' To the woman he said no more than

Mark X. 18, J god's goodness. 315

' What is this that thou hast done ? ' ver. 13. And in the Scripture we
find, when he cites the Israehtes before him for their sin, he expostulates
with them, not so much upon the absolute right he had to challenge their
obedience, as upon the equity and reasonableness of his law, which they
had transgressed, that by the same argument of sweetness wherewith he
would attract them to their duty, he might shame them after their offence,
Isa. i. 2, Ezek, xviii. 25.

Secondly, By the threatenings he manifests his goodness, as well as by his
promises. He promises, that he might be a rewarder ; and threatens, that
he might not be a punisher : the one is to elevate our hope, and the other
to excite our fear — the two passions whereby the nature of man is managed
in the world. He imprints upon man sentiments of a misery by sin in his
thundering commination, that he might engage him the more to embrace
and be guided by the motives of sweetness in his gracious promises. The
design of them was to preserve man in his due bounds, that God might not
have occasion to blow upon him the flames of his justice ; to suppress those
irregular passions, which the nature of man (though created without any
disorder) was capable of entertaining upon the appearance of suitable objects ;
and to keep the waves from swelling upon any turning wind, that so man,
being modest in the use of the goodness God had allowed him, might still
be capable of fresh streams of divine bounty, without ever falhng under his
righteous wrath for any transgression. What a prospect of goodness is in
this proceeding, to disclose man's happiness to be as durable as his inno-
cence ; and set before a rational creature the extremest misery due to his
crime, to affright him from neglecting his Creator, and making unworthy
returns to his goodness ! What could be done more by goodness to suit
that passion of fear which was implanted in the nature of man, than to
assui'e him he should not degenerate from the righteousness of his nature,
and violate the authoiity of his Creator, without falling from his own happi-
ness, and sinking into the most deplorable calamity ?

Thirdly, The reward he promised, manifests yet further his goodness to
man. It was his goodness to intend a reward to man. No necessity could
oblige God to reward man, had he continued obedient in his created state.
For in all rewards which are truly merited, besides some kind of equality
to be considered between the person doing service and the person reward-
ing, and also between the act performed and the reward bestowed, there
must also be considei-ed the condition of the person doing the service, that
he is not obliged to do it as a duty, but is at his own choice whether to
offer it or no. But man being wholly dependent on God in his being
and preservation, having nothing of his own but what he had received from
the hands of divine bounty, 1 Cor. iv. 7, his service was due by the
strongest obligation to God. But there was no natural engagement on God
to return a reward to him ; for man could return nothing of his own, but
that only which he had received from his Creator. It must be pure good-
ness that gives a gracious reward for a due debt, to receive his own from
man and return more than he had received. A divine reward doth far
surmount the value of a rational service.

It was therefore a mighty goodness to stipulate with man, that upon his
obedience he should enjoy an immortality in that nature. The article on
man's part was obedience, which was necessarily just, and founded in the
nature of man.* He had been unjust, ungrateful, and violated all laws of
righteousness, had he committed any act unworthy of one that had been so great
a subject of divine liberality ; but the article on God's part of giving a per-
* Amyrald, Diesert., p. 637, 638=

316 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

petual blessedness to innocent man, was not founded upon rules of strict justice
and righteousness, for that would have argued God to be a debtor to man ;
but that God cannot be to the work of his hands, that had received the
materials of his being and acting from him, as the vessel doth from the potter.
But this was founded only on the goodness of the divine nature, whereby he
cannot but be kind to an innocent and holy creature. The nature of God
inclined him to it by the rules of goodness, but the service of man could
not claim it by the rules of justice without a stipulation ; so that the cove-
nant whereby God obliged himself to continue the happiness of man upon
the continuance of his obedience, in the original of it, springs from pure
goodness, though the performance of it upon fulfilling the condition required
in the creature, was founded upon the rules of righteousness and truth, after
divine goodness had brought it forth.

God did create man for a reward and happiness. Now God's implanting
in the nature of man a desire after happiness, and some higher happiness
than he had in creation invested him in, doth evidence that God did not
create man only for his own service, but for his attaining a greater happiness.
All rational creatures are possessed with a principle of seeking after good,
the highest good, and God did not plant in man this principle in vain. It
had not been goodness to put this principle in man, if he had designed never
to bestow a happiness on man for his obedience. This had been repugnant
to the goodness and wisdom of God ; and the Scripture doth very emphati-
cally express the felicity of man to be the design of God in first forming
him and moulding a creature, as well as working him a new creature : 2 Cor.
V. 1, 5, ' He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing, is God.' He framed
this earthly tabernacle for a residence in an eternal habitation, and a better
habitation than an earthly paradise. What we expect in the resurrection,
that very same thing God did in creation intend us 'for ; but since the cor-
ruption of our natures, we must undergo a dissolution of our bodies, and
may have just reason of a despondency, since sin hath seemed to change the
course of God's bounty, and brought us under a curse. He hath given us
the earnest of his Spirit, as an assurance that he will perform that very self-
same thing, the conferring that happiness upon renewed creatures, for which
he first formed man in creation, when he compacted his earthly tabernacle
of the dust of the ground, and reared it up before him.

Fourthly, It was a mighty goodness that God should give man an eternal
reward. That an eternity of reward was promised, is implied in the death
that was threatened upon transgression. Whatsoever you conceive the
threatened death to be, either for nature or duration, upon transgression ;
of the same nature and duration you must suppose the life to be, which is
implied upon his constancy in his integrity. As sin would render him an
eternal object of God's hatred, so his obedience would render him an eternally
amiable object to his Creator, as the standing angels are preserved and con-
firmed in an entire felicity and glory. Though the threatening be only
expressed by God, Gen. ii. 17, yet the other is implied, and might easily be
concluded from it by Adam ; and one reason why God only expressed the
threatening, and not the promise, was, because man might collect some hopes
and expectations of a perpetual happiness from that image of God which he
beheld in himself, and for the large provision he had made for him in the
world, and the commission given him to increase and multiply, and to rule
as a lord over his other works ; whereas he could not so easily have imagined
himself capable of being exposed to such an extraordinary calamity as an
eternal death, without some signification of it from God. It is easily con-
cludable, that eternal life was supposed to be promised, to be conferred upon

Mark X. 18.J god's goodness. 317

him if he stood, as well as eternal death to be inflicted on him if he rebelled.*
Now this eternal life was not due to his nature, but it was a pure beam
and gift of divine goodness ; for there was no proportion between man's ser-
vice in his innocent estate, and a reward so great both for nature and dura-
tion. It was a higher reward than can be imagined either due to the nature
of man, or upon any natural right claimable by his obedience. All that
could be expected by him was but a natural happiness, not a supernatural. As
there was no necessity upon the account of natural righteousness, so there
was no necessity upon the account of the goodness of God to elevate the
nature of man to a supernatural happiness, merely because he created him ;
for though it be necessary for God, when he would create, in regard of his
wisdom, to create for some end, yet it was not necessary that end should be
a supernatural end and happiness, since a natural blessedness had been suffi-
cient for man. And though God, in creating angels and men intellectual
and rational creatures, did make them necessary for himself and his own
glory, yet it was not necessary for him to order either angels or men to
such a felicity as consists in a clear vision, and so high a fruition of him-
self; for all other things are made by him for himself, and yet not for the
vision of himself. God might have created man only for a natural happi-
ness, according to the perfection of his natural faculties, and dealt bounti-
fully with him, if he had never intended him a supernatural blessedness and
an eternal recompence ; but what a largeness of goodness is here, to design
man in his creation for so rich a blessedness as an eternal life, with the frui-
tion of himself! He hath not only given to man all things which are neces-
sary, but designed for man that which the poor creature could not imagine.
He garnished the earth for him, and garnished him for an eternal felicity,
had he not, by slighting the goodness of God, stripped himself of the present,
and forfeited his future blessedness.

2. The second thing is the manifestation of this goodness in redemption.
The whole gospel is nothing but one entire mirror of divine goodness.
The whole of redemption is wrapt up in that one expression of the angel's
song, Luke ii. 14, ' Good will towards man.' The angels sang but one song
before, whi-h is upon record, but the matter of it seems to be the wisdom
of God chiefly in creation : Job xxxviii. 7, compare ver. 5, 6, 8, 9. The
angels are there meant by the morning stars. The visible stars of heaven
were not distinctly formed when the foundations of the earth were laid ; and
the title of the sons of God verifies it, since none but creatures of under-
standing are dignified in Scripture with that title. There they celebrate his
wisdom in creation ; here his goodness in redemption, which is the entire
matter of the song.

(1.) Goodness was the spring of redemption. All and every part of it
owes only to this perfection the appearance of it in the world. This only
excited wisdom to bring forth from so great an evil as the apostasy of man,
60 great a good as the recovery of him. When man fell from his created
goodness, God would evidence that he could not fall from his infinite good-
ness, that the greatest evil could not surmount the ability of his wisdom
to contrive, nor the riches of his bounty to present us a remedy for it.^
Divine goodness would not stand by a spectator, without being reliever of
that misery man had plunged himself into ; but by astonishing methods it
would recover him to happiness, who had wrested himself out of his hands,
to fling himself into the most deplorable calamity ; and it was the greater,
since it surmounted those natural inclinations, and those strong provocations
which he had to shower down the power of his wrath. What could be the
* Suarez, De Gratia, vol. 1. p. 126, 127.

318 cnAENOCKS WORKS. [Mark X. 18.

source of such a procedure but this excellency of the divine nature, since
no violence could force him, nor was there any merit to persuade to such a
restoration ? This, under the name of his love, is rendered the sole cause
of the redeeming death of the Son. It was to ' commend his love' with the
highest gloss, and in so singular a manner, that had not its parallel in
nature, nor in all his other works, and reaches in the brightness of it beyond
.the manifested extent of any other attribute, Rom. v. 8. It must be only a
miraculous goodness that induced him to expose the life of his Son to those
difficulties in the world, and death upon the cross, for the freedom of sordid
rebels. His great end was to give such a demonstration of the liberality of
his nature, as might be attractive to his creature, remove its shakings and
tremblings, and encourage its approaches to him. It is in this he would
not only manifest his love, but assume the name of love. By this name the
Holy Ghost calls him in relation to this good will manifested in his Son :
1 John iv. 8, 9, ' God is love. In this is manifested the love of God towards
us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we
might live through him.' He would take the name he never expressed him-
self in before. He was Jehovah in regard of the truth of his promise ; so
he would be known of old ; he is goodness in regard of the grandeur of his
affection in the mission of his Son ; and therefore he would be known by the
name of love now in the days of the gospel.

(2.) It was a pure goodness. He was under no obligation to pity our
misery and repair our ruins ; he might have stood to the terms of the first
covenant, and exacted our eternal death, since we had committed an infinite
transgression. He was under no tie to put off the robes of a judge for the
bowels of a father, and erect a mercy-seat above his tribunal of justice.*
The reparation of man hath no necessary connection with his creation. It
follows not that because goodness had extracted us from nothing by a mighty
power, that it must lift us out of wilful misery by a mighty grace. Certainly
that God, who had no need of creating us, had far less need of redeeming
us ; for since he created one world, he could have as easily destroyed it and
reared another. It had not been unbecoming the divine goodness or wisdom
to have let man perpetually wallow in that sink wherein he had plunged
himself, since he was criminal by his own will, and therefore miserable by
his own fault ; nothing could necessitate this reparation. If divine good-
ness could not be obliged by the angelical dignity to repair that nature, he
is further from any obligation by the meanness of man to repair human
nature. There was less necessity to restore man than to restore the fallen
angels. What could man do to oblige God to a reparation of him ? Since he
could not render him a recompence for his goodness manifested in his crea-
tion, he must be much more impotent to render him a debtor for the
redemption of him from misery. Could it be a salary for anything we had
done ? Alas 1 we are so far from meriting it, that by our daily demerits we
seem ambitious to put a stop to any further effusions of it. We could not
have complained of him if he had left us in the misery we had courted, since
he was bound by no law to bestow upon us the recovery we wanted. When
the apostle speaks of the gospel of redemption, he giveth it the title of the
' gospel of the blessed God,' 1 Tim. i. 11. It was the gospel of God abound-
ing in his own blessedness, which received no addition by man's redemption.
If he had been blessed by it, it had been a goodness to himself as well as to
the creature. It was not an indigent goodness, needing the receiving any-
thing from us ; but it was a pure goodness, streaming out of itself, without
bringing anything into itself for the perfection of it. There was no good-
* Kada, Controvers. part iii. p. 363.

Make X. 18.] god's goodness. 819

ness in us to be the motive of his love, but his goodness was the fountain of
our benefit.

(3.) It was a distinct goodness of the whole Trinity, In the creation of
roan we find a general consultation, Gen. i. 26, without those distinct labours
and ofiices of each person, and without those raised expressions and marks
of joy and triumph as at man's restoration. In this there are distinct func-
tions : the grace of the Father, the merit of the Son, and the efiicacy of the
Spirit. The Father makes the promise of redemption, the Son seals it with
his blood, and the Spirit applies it ; the Father adopts us to be his children,
the Son redeems us to be his members, and the Spirit renews us to be his
temples. In this the Father testifies himself well pleased in a voice, the Son
proclaims his own delight to do the will of God, and the Spirit hastens with
the wing of a dove to fit him for his work; and afterwards in his apparition
in the likeness of fiery tongues, manifests his zeal for the propagation of the
redeeming gospel.

(4.) The effects of it proclaim his great goodness. It is by this we are
delivered from the corruption of our nature, the ruin of our happiness, the
deformity of our sins, and the punishment of our transgressions. He frees
us from the ignorance wherewith we were darkened, dnd from the slavery
wherein we were fettered. When he came to make Adam's process after his
crime, instead of pronouncing the sentence of death he had merited, he utters
a promise that man could not have expected. His kindness swells above his
provoked justice ; and while he chaseth him out of paradise, he gives him
hopes of regaining the same or a better habitation, and is in the whole more
ready to 'prevent him with the blessings of his goodness,' than charge him
with the horror of his crimes, Gen iii. 15. It is a goodness that pardons us
more transgressions than there are moments in our lives, and overlooks as .
many follies as there are thoughts in our heart. He doth not only relieve
our wants, but restores us to our dignity. It is a greater testimony of good-
ness to instate a person in the highest honour, than barely to supply his pre-
sent necessity. It is an admirable pity whereby he was inclined to redeem
us, and an incomparable affection whereby he was resolved to exalt us. What .
can be desired more of him than his goodness hath granted 2 He hath sought
us out when we were lost, and ransomed us when we were captives ; he hath
pardoned us when we were condemned, and raised us when we were dead.
In creation, he reared us from nothing; in redemption, he delivers our under-
standing from ignorance and vanity, and our wills from impotence and obsti-
nacy, and our whole man from a death worse than that nothing he drew us
from by creation.

(5.) Hence we may consider the height of this goodness in redemption to
exceed that in creation. He gave man a being in creation, but did not draw
him from inexpressible misery by that act. His liberality in the gospel doth
infinitely surpass what we admire in the works of nature. His goodness in
the latter is more astonishing to our belief, than his goodness in creation is
visible to our eye. There is more of his bounty expressed in that one verse,
' So God loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,' John iii. 16,
than there is in the whole volume of the world. It is an incomprehensible
so; a so that all the angels in heaven cannot analyse, and few comment upon
or understand the dimensions of this so. In creation, he formed an innocent
creature of the dust of the gi'ound ; in redemption, he restores a rebellious
creature by the blood of his Son ; it is greater than that goodness manifested
in creation.

[1.] In regard of the difficulty of effecting it. In creation, mere nothing
was van(j[uished to bring us into being ; in redemption, sullen enmity was

820 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

conquered for the enjoyment of our restoration. In creation, he subdued a
nullity to make us creatures ; in redemption, his goodness overcomes his
omnipotent justice to restore us to felicity. A word from the mouth of
goodness inspired the dust of men's bodies with a hving soul, but the blood
of his Son must be shed, and the laws of natural affection seem to be over-
turned, to lay the foundation of our renewed happiness. In the first, heaven
did but speak and the earth was formed ; in the second, heaven itself must
sink to earth, and be clothed with dusty earth, to reduce man's dust to its
original state.

[2.] This goodness is greater than that manifested in creation, in regai'd
of its cost. This was a more expensive goodness than what was laid out in
creation : ' The redemption of one soul is precious,' Ps. xlix, 8, much more
costly than the whole fabric of the world, or as many worlds as the under-
standings of angels in their utmost extent can conceive to be created. For
the effecting of this God parts with his dearest treasure, and his Son eclipses
bis choicest glory ; for this God must be made man, eternity must suffer
death, the Lord of angels must weep in a cradle, and the Creator of the
world must hang like a slave. He must be in a manger in Bethlehem, and
die upon a cross on Calvary ; unspotted righteousness must be made sin,
and unblemished blessedness be made a curse. He was at no other expense
than the breath of his mouth to form man ; the fruits of the earth could
have maintained innocent man without any other cost ; but his broken nature
cannot be healed without the invaluable medicine of the blood of God. View
Christ in the womb and in the manger, in his weary steps and hungry bowels,
in his prostrations in the garden and in his clotted drops of bloody sweat ;
view his head pierced with a crown of thorns, and his face besmeared with
the soldiers' slabber ; view him in his march to Calvary, and his elevation
on the painful cross with his head hanged down, and his side streaming
blood ; view him pelted with the scoffs of the governors, and the derisions
of the rabble : and see in all this what cost Goodness was at for man's re-
demption. In creation his power made the sun to shine upon us, and in
redemption his bowels sent a Son to die for us.

[3.] This goodness of God in redemption is greater than that manifested
in creation, in regard of man's desert of the contrary. In the creation, as
there was nothing without him to allure him to the expressions of his bounty,
so there was nothing that did damp the inclinations of his goodness. The
nothing from whence the world was drawn, could never merit nor demerit a
being, because it was nothing ; as there was nothing to engage him, so there
was nothing to disoblige him ; as his favour could not be merited, so neither
could his anger be deserved. But in this he finds ingratitude against the
former marks of his goodness, and rebellion against the sweetness of his
sovereignty, crimes unworthy of the dews of goodness, and unworthy of the
sharpest strokes of vengeance ; and therefore, the Scripture advanceth the
honour of it above the title of mere goodness to that of grace, Rom. v. 2,
Tit. ii. 11, because men were not only unworthy of a blessing, but worthy
of a curse. An innocent nothing more deserves creation, than a culpable
creature deserves an exemption from destruction. When man fell, and gave
occasion to God to repent of his created work, his ravishing goodness sur-
mounted the occasions he had of repenting, and the provocations he had to
the destruction of his frame.

[4.] It was a greater goodness than was expressed towards the angels.

First, A greater goodness than was expressed towards the standing angels.
The Son of God did no more expose his life for the confirmation of those
that stood, than for the restoration of those tbat fell. The death of Christ

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 321

was not for the holy angels, but for sinful man ; they needed the grace of
God to confirm them, but not the death of Christ to restore or preserve
them. They had a beloved holiness to be established by the powerful grace
of God, but not any abominable sin to be expiated and blotted out by the
blood of God. They had no debt to pay but that of obedience, but we had
both a debt of obedience to the precepts, and a debt of suffering to the
penalty after the fall. Whether the holy angels were confirmed by Christ
or no, is a question. Some think they were, from Col. i. 20, where ' things
in heaven ' are said to be ' reconciled' ; but some think that place signifies
no more than the reconciliation of things in heaven, if meant of the angels,
to things on earth, with whom they were at enmity in the cause of their
sovereign ; or by the reconciliation of things in heaven to God, is meant the
glorified saints who were once in a state of sin, and whom the death of
Christ upon the cross reached, though dead long before. But if angels were
confirmed by Christ, it was by him not as a slain sacrifice, but as the sove-
reign head of the whole creation, appointed by God to gather all things into
one, which some think to be the intendment of Eph. i. 10, where all things,
as well those in heaven as those on earth, are said to be * gathered to-
gether in one in Christ.' Where is a syllable in Scripture of his being
crucified for angels, but only for sinners ? not for the confirmation of the one,
but the reconciliation of the other, so that the goodness whereby God
continued those blessed spirits in heaven through the efi"usions of his grace
is a small thing to the restoring us to our forfeited happiness through the
streams of divine blood. The preserving a man in life, is a little thing and
a smaller benefit than the raising a man from death. The rescuing a
man from an ignominious punishment, lays a greater obligation than barely
to prevent him from committing a capital crime. The preserving a man
standing upon the top of a steep hill is more easy than to bring a crippled and
phthysical man from the bottom to the top. The continuance God gave to
the angels, is not so signal a mark of goodness as the deliverance he gave
to us, since they were not sunk into sin, nor by any crime fallen into misery.
Secondly, His goodness in redemption is greater than any goodness ex-
pressed to the fallen angels. It is the wonder of his goodness to us, that
he was mindful of fallen man and careless of fallen angels, that he should
visit man, wallowing in death and blood, with the day-spring from on high,
and never turn the Egyptians' darkness of devils into a cheerful day. When
they sinned, divine thunder dashed them into hell ; when man sinned, divine
blood wafts the fallen creature from his misery. The angels wallow in their
own blood for ever, while Christ is made partaker of our blood, and wallows
in his blood, that we might not for ever corrupt in ours. They tumbled down
from heaven, and divine goodness could not vouchsafe to catch them ; man
tumbles down, and divine goodness holds out a hand drenched in the blood
of him that was from the foundations of the world, to lift us up, Heb. ii. 16.
He spared not those dignified spirits when they revolted, and spared not
punishing his Son for dusty man when he offended, when he might as well
for ever have let man lie in the chains wherein he had entangled himself, as
them. We were as fit objects of justice as they, and they as fit objects of
goodness as we ; they were not more wretched by their fall than we, and the
poverty of our nature rendered us more unable to recover ourselves than the
dignity of theirs did them ; they were his Keuben, his firstborn, they were
his might and the beginning of his strength, yet those elder sons he
neglected, to prefer the younger ; they were the prime and golden pieces
of creation, not laden with gross matter, yet they lie under the ruins of
their fall, while man, lead in comparison of them, is refined for another wwld.

VOL. II. X

322 chaenock's woeks. [IIaek X. 18.

They seemed to be fitter objects of divine goodness, in regard of the emi-
nency of their nature above the human. One angel excelled in endowments
of mind and spirit, vastness of understanding, greatness of power, all the
sons of men ; they were more capable to praise him, more capable to serve
him, and because of the acuteness of their comprehension, more able to have
a due estimate of such a redemption, had it been afforded them ; yet that good-
ness which had created them so comely, would not lay itself out in restoring
the beauty they had defaced. The promise was of bruising the serpent's
head for us, not of lifting up the serpent's head with us ; their nature was not
assumed, nor any command given them to believe or repent. Not one
devil spared, not one apostate spirit recovered, not one of those eminent
creatures restored ; eveiy one of them hath only a prospect of misery, with-
out any glimpse of recovery. They were ruined under one sin, and we re-
paired under many. All his redeeming goodness was laid out upon man :
Ps. cxliv. 3, ' What is man, that thou takest knowledge of him ! and the son
of man, that thou makest account of him !' making account of him above
angels. As they fell without any tempting them, so God would leave them to
rise without any assisting them. I know the schools trouble themselves to
find out the reasons of this peculiarity of grace to man, and not to them,
because the whole human nature fell, but only a part of the angeHcal ; the
one sinned by a seduction, and the other by a sullenness, without any temp-
ter. Every angel sinned by his own proper will, whereas Adam's posterity
sinned by the will of the first man, the common root of all. God would de-
prive the devil of any glory in the satisfaction of his envious desire to hinder
man from attainment and possession of that happiness which himself had
lost. The weakness of man below the angelical nature might excite the
divine mercy ; and since all things of the lower world were created for man,
God would not lose the honour of his works, by losing the immediate end
for which he framed them. And finally, because in the restoration of angels
there would have been only a restoration of one nature, that was not com-
prehensive of the nature of inferior things. But after all such conjectures
man must sit down, and acknowledge divine goodness to be the only spring,
without any other motive. Since infinite wisdom could have contrived a way
for redemption for fallen angels, as well as for fallen man, and restored both
the one and the other, why might not Christ have assumed their nature
as well as ours into the unity of the divine person, and suffered the wrath of
God in their nature for them, as well as in his human soul for us ? It is
as conceivable that two natures might have been assumed by the Son of God
as well as three souls be in man distinct, as some think there are.

Thirdly, To enhance this goodness yet higher. It was a greater goodness
to us than was for a time manifested to Christ himself. To demonstrate his
goodness to man in preventing his eternal ruin, he would for a while with-
hold his goodness from his Son, by exposing his life as the price of our ran-
som ; not only subjecting him to the derisions of enemies, desertions of
friends, and malice of devils, but to the inexpressible bitterness of his own
wrath in his soul, as made an offering for sin.

The particle so, John iii. 16, seems to intimate this supremacy of good-
ness : ' He so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.' He so
loved the world, that he seemed for a time not to love his Son in comparison
of it, or equal with it. The person to whom a gift is given is in that regard
accounted more valuable than the gift or present made to him. Thus God
valued our redemption above the worldly happiness of the Redeemer, and
sentenceth him to an humiliation on eai'th, in order to our exaltation in
heaven. He was desirous to hear him groaning, and see him bleeding, that

Maek X. 18.] god's GooDXEss. 323

we might not groan under his frowns, and bleed under his wrath. He
spared not him, that he might spare us ; refused not to strike him, that he
might be well pleased with us ; drenched his sword in the blood of his Son,
that it might not for ever be wet with ours, but that his goodness might for
ever triumph in our salvation. He was willing to have his Son made man
and die, rather than man should perish, who had delighted to ruin himself.
He seemed to degrade him for a time from what he was.* But since he
could not be united to any but to an intellectual creature, he could not be
united to any viler and more sordid creature than the earthly nature of man.
And when this Son in our nature prayed that the cup might pass from him,
goodness would not suffer it, to shew how it valued the manifestation of
itself in the salvation of man, above the preservation of the life of so dear a
person.

In particular, wherein this goodness appears.

1. The first resolution to redeem, and the means appointed for redemp-
tion, could have no other inducement but divine goodness. We cannot too
highly value the merit of Christ ; but we must not so much extend the merit
of Christ as to draw a value to eclipse the goodness of God. Though we
owe our redemption and the fruits of it to the death of Christ, yet we owe
not the first resolutions of redemption, and the assumption of our nature,
the means of redemption, to the merit of Christ. Divine goodness only,
without the association of any merit, not only of man, but of the Redeemer
himself, begat the first purpose of our recovery. He was singled out and
predestinated to be our Redeemer, before he took our nature to merit our
redemption. ' God sent his Son ' is a frequent expression in the gospel of
St John, John iii. 34, v. 24, xvii. 3. To what end did God send Christ
but to redeem ? The purpose of redemption, therefore, preceded the pitch-
ing upon Christ as the means and procm-ing cause of it, i. e. of our actual
redemption, but not of the redeeming purpose ; the end is always in inten-
tion before the means. f * God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son.' The love of God to the world -was first in intention and the
order of nature, before the will of giving his Son to the world. His inten-
tion of saving was before the mission of a Saviour, so that this afiection rose
not from the merit of Christ, but the merit of Christ was directed by this
affection. It was the efiect of it, not the cause. Nor was the union of our
nature with his merited by him ; all his meritorious acts were performed in
our nature. The nature therefore wherein he performed it was not merited ;
that grace which was not, could not merit what it was. He could not merit
that humanity which must be assumed before he could merit anything for
us, because all merit for us must be offered in the nature which had offeuded.
It is true Christ gave himself, but by the order of divine goodness ; he that
begat him pitched upon him, and called him to this great work, Heb. v. 5.
He is therefore called ' the Lamb of God,' as being set apart by God to be
a propitiating and appeasing sacrifice. He is 'the wisdom of God,' since
from the Father he reveals the counsel and order of redemption. In this
regard he calls God his God, in the prophet, Isa. xlix. 4, and in the evan-
gelist, John XX. 17 ; though he was big with affection for the accomplish-
ment, yet he came 'not to do his own will,' but the will of divine goodness.
His own will it was too, but not principally, as being the first wheel in
motion, but subordinate to the eternal will of divine bounty. It was by the
will of God that he came, and by his will he drank the dreggy cup of bitter-
ness. Divine justice 'laid upon him the iniquity of us all,' but divine
goodness intended it for our rescue ; divine goodness singled him out and
* Lingend de Eucharist, p. 84, 85. t Lessius.

824 chaenock's works. [Mark X. 18.

set him apart, divine' goodness [invited him to it, divine goodness com-
manded him to effect it, and put a law into his heart to bias him in the per-
forming of it; divine goodness sent him, and divine goodness moved justice
to bruise him; and after his sacrifice, divine goodness accepted him and
caressed him for it. So earnest was it for our redemption, as to give out
special and irreversible orders. Death was commanded to be endured by
him for us, and life commanded to be imparted by him to us, John x. 16, 18.
If God had not been the mover, but had received the proposal from another,
he might have heard it, but was not bound to grant it. His sovereign
authority was not under any obligation to receive another's sponsion for the
miserable criminal. As Christ is the head of man, so God is the head of
Christ, 1 Cor. xi. 3. He did nothing but by his direction, as he was not a
mediator but by the constitution of divine goodness. As ' a liberal man
deviseth liberal things,' Isa. xxxii. 8, so did a bountiful God devise a bounti-
ful act, -wherein his kindness and love as a Saviour appeared. He was
possessed with the resolutions to manifest his goodness in Christ 'in the
beginning of his way,' before he descended to the act of creation, Prov.
viii. 22, 23. This intention of goodness preceded his making that creature
man, who he foresaw would fall, and by his fall disjoint and entangle the
vphole frame of the world without such a provision.

2. In God's giving Christ to be our Redeemer, he gave the highest gift
that it was possible for divine goodness to bestow. As there is not a gi'eater
God than himself to be conceived, so there is not a greater gift for this
great God to present to his creatures. Never did God go farther in any of
his excellent perfections than this. It is such a dole that cannot be tran-
scended with a choicer. He is, as it were, come to the last mite of bis
treasure. And though he could create millions of worlds for us, he cannot
give a greater Son to us. He could abound in the expressions of his power
in new creation of worlds, which have not yet been seen, and in the lustre
of his wisdom in more stately structures ; but if he should frame as many
worlds as there are mites of dust and matter in this, and make every one of
them as bright and glorious as the sun, though his power and wisdom
would be more signalised, yet his goodness could not, since he hath not a
choicer gift to bless those brighter worlds withal than he hath conferred
upon this. Nor can immense goodness contrive a richer means to conduct
those worlds to happiness, than he hath both invented for this world and
presented it with. It cannot be imagined that it can extend itself farther
than to give a gift equal with himself, a gift as dear to him as himself. His
wisdom, had it studied millions of eternities (excuse the expression, since
eternity admits of no millions, it being an interminable duration), it could
have found out no more to give, his goodness could have bestowed no more,
and our necessity could not have required a greater offering for our relief.
When God intended in redemption the manifestation of his highest good-
ness, it could not be without the donation of the choicest gift. As when he
would ensure our comfort he swears ' by himself,' because he cannot ' swear
by a greater,' Heb. vi 13, so when he would ensure our happiness he gives
us his Son, because he cannot give a greater, being equal with himself.
Had the Father given himself in person, he had given one first in order,
but not greater in essence and glorious perfections. It could have been no
more the life of God that should then have been laid down for us, and so
it was now, since the human nature did not subsist but in his divine person.

(1.) It is a greater gift than worlds, or all things purchased by him.
What was this gift but * the image of his person, and the brightness of his
glory ? Heb. i. 3. What was this gift, but one as rich as eternal blessed-

Makk X. 18.] god's goodness. 325

ness could make him ? What was this gift, but one that possessed the
fulness of earth, and the more immense riches of heaven ? It is a more
valuable present than if he presented us with thousands of worlds of angels
and inferior creatures, because his person is incomparably greater, not only
than all conceivable, but inconceivable creations. We are more obliged to
him for it than if he had made us angels of the highest rank in heaven,
because it is a gift of more value than the whole angelical nature, because
he is an infinite person, and therefore infinitely transcends whatsoever is
finite, though of the highest dignity. The wounds of an almighty God for
us are a greater testimony of goodness than if we had all the other riches of
heaven and earth. This perfection had not appeared in such an astonish-
ing grandeur had it pardoned us without so rich a satisfaction ; that
had been pardon to our sin, not a God of our nature. ' God so loved the
world, that he pardoned it,' had not sounded so great and so good, as ' God
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.' Est aliquid in
CJuisto formosius servatore. There is something in Christ more excellent
and comely than the ofiice of a saviour ; the greatness of his person is more
excellent than the salvation procured by his death ; it was a greater gift than
was bestowed^upon innocent Adam or the holy angels. In the creation, his
goodness gave us creatures for our use ; in our redemption, his goodness
gives us what was dearest to him for our service ; our sovereign in ofiice to
benefit us, as well as in a royalty to govern us.

(2.) It was a greater gift, because it was his own Son, not an angel. It
had been a mighty goodness to have given one of the lofty seraphims ; a
greater goodness to have given the whole corporation of those glorious spirits
for us, those children of the Most High ; but he gave that Son, whom he
commands ' all the angels to worship,' Heb. i. 6, and all men to adore, and
pay the lowest homage to, Ps. ii. 12 ; that Son that is to be honoured by
us, as we honour the Father, John v. 23 ; that Son which was his delight,
Prov. viii. 30, his delujhts, in the Hebrew, wherein all the delights of the
Father were gathered in one, as well as of the whole creation, and not simply
a Son, but an ' only begotten Son,' John iii. 16, upon which Christ lays the
stress with an emphasis. He had but one Son in heaven or earth, one Son
from an unviewable eternity, and that one Son he gave for a degenerate
world ; this Son he consecrated for evermore a priest, Heb. vii. 28. ' The
•word of the oath makes the Son ; ' the peculiarity of his Sonship heightens
the goodness of the donor. It was no meaner a person that he gave to
empty himself of his glory, to fulfil an obedience for us, that we might be
rendered happy partakers of the divine nature. Those that know the
natural afieclion of a father to a son must judge the affection of God the
Father to the Son infinitely greater than the afiection of an earthly father to
the son of his bowels. It must be an unparalleled goodness to give up a
son that he loved with so ardent an affection for the redemption of rebels ;
abandon a glorious son to a dishonourable death, for the security of those
that had violated the laws of righteousness, and endeavoured to pull the
sovereign crown from his head. Besides, being an only Son, all those
afi"ections centred in him, which in parents would have been divided among
a multitude of children ; so then, as it was a testimony of the highest faith
and obedience in Abraham to offer up his only begotten son to God, Heb.
xi. 17, so it was the triumph of divine goodness to give so great, so dear a
person for so little a thing as man, and for such a piece of nothing and
vanity as a sinful world.

(3.) And this Son given to rescue us by his death. It was a gift to us ;
for our sakes he descended from his throne, and dwelt on earth ; for our

826 charnock's works. [Mark X, 18.

sakes he was made flesh, and infirm flesh ; for our sakes he was made a
curse, and scorched in the furnace of his Father's wrath ; for our sakes he
went naked, armed only with his own strength, into the lists of that combat
with the devils that led us captive. Had he given him to be a leader for
the conquest of some earthly enemies, it had been a great goodness to dis-
play his banners, and bring us under his conduct ; but he sent him to lay
down his life in the bitterest and most inglorious manner, and exposed him
to a cursed death for our redemption from that dreadful curse which would
have broken us to pieces, and irreparably have crushed us. He gave him
to us, to suS'er for us as a man, and redeem us as a God ; to be a sacrifice
to expiate our sin by translating the punishment upon himself, which was
merited by us. Thus was he made low to exalt us, and debased to advance
us, made poor to enrich us, 2 Cor. viii. 9, and eclipsed to brighten our
sullied natures, and wounded that he might be a physician for our languish-
ments ; he was ordered to taste the bitter cup of death, that we might drink
of the rivers of immortal life and pleasures ; to submit to the frailties of the
human nature, that we might possess the glories of the divine ; he was
ordered to be a sufi"erer, that we might be no longer captives, and to pass
through the fire of divine wrath, that he might purge our nature from the
dross it had contracted. Thus was the righteous given for sin, the innocent
for criminals, the glory of heaven for the dregs of earth, and the immense
riches of a Deity expended to re-stock man.

(4.) And a Son that was exalted for what he had done for us by the order
of divine goodness. The exaltation of Christ was no less a signal mark of
his miraculous goodness to us than of his affection to him ; since he was
obedient by divine goodness to die for us, his advancement was for his
obedience to those orders. The name given to him above every name,
PhiHp. ii. 8, 9, was a repeated triumph of this perfection. Since his passion
was not for himself, — he was wholly innocent, — but for us who were criminal ;
his advancement was not only for himself as redeemer, but for us as
redeemed. Divine goodness centred in him, both in his cross and in his
crown ; for it was for the ' purging our sins, he sat down on the right hand
of the majesty on high,' Heb. i. 3. And the whole blessed society of prin-
cipalities and powers in heaven admire this goodness of God, and ascribe to
him honour, glory, and power for advancing the Lamb slain, Rev. v. 11-13.
Divine goodness did not only give him to us, but gave him power, riches,
strength, and honour for manifesting this goodness to us, and opening the
passages for its fuller conveyances to the sons of men. Had not God had
thoughts of a perpetual goodness, he would not have settled him so near him to
manage our cause, and testified so much alfeetion to him on our behalf.
This goodness gave him to be debased for us, and ordered him to be
enthroned for us. As it gave him to us bleeding, so it would give him to us
triumphing ; that as we have a share by grace in the merits of his humilia-
tion, we might partake also of the glories of his coronation ; that from first to
last we may behold nothing but the triumphs of divine goodness to fallen man.

(5.) In bestowing this gift on us, divine goodness gives whole God to us.
Whatsoever is great and excellent in the Godhead, the Father gives us by
giving us his Son. The Creator gives himself to us in his Son Christ. In
giving creatures to us, he gives the riches of earth ; in giving himself to us,
he gives the riches of heaven, which surmount all understanding; it is in this
gift he becomes our God, and passeth over the title of all that he is, for our use
and benefit, that every attribute in the divine nature may be claimed by us ;
not to be imparted to us, whereby we may be deified, but employed for our
welfare, whereby we may be blessed. He gave himself in creation to us,

Maek X. 18. j god's goodness. 327

in the image of his holiness, but in redemption he gave himself in the image
of his person ; he would not only communicate the goodness -without him,
but bestow upon us the infinite 'goodness of his own nature, that that
•which was his own end and happiness might be our end and happiness, viz.,
himself.

Bj giving his Son, he hath given himself, and in both gifts he hath given
all things to us. The Creator of all things is eminently all things : ' He
hath given all things into the hands' of his Son, John iii. 35, and by conse-
quence given all things into the hands of his redeemed creatures, by giving
them him to whom he gave all things ; whatsoever we were invested in by
creation, whatsoever we were deprived of by corruption, and more, he hath
deposited in safe hands for our enjoyment ; and what can divine goodness
do more for us ? What further can it give unto us than what it hath given,
and in that gift designed for us ?

3. This goodness is enhanced by considering the state of man in the first
transgression, and since.

(1.) Man's first transgression. If we should rip up every vein of that
fij-st sin, should we find any want of wickedness to excite a just indignation ?
What was there but ingratitude to divine bounty and rebellion against divine
sovereignty ? The royalty of God was attempted, the supremacy of divine
knowledge above man's own knowledge envied ; the riches of goodness,
whereby he lived and breathed, slighted. There is a discontent with God
upon an unreasonable sentiment, that God had denied a knowledge to him
which was his right and due, when there should have been an humble acknow-
ledgment of that unmerited goodness which had not only given him a being
above other creatures, but placed him the governor and lord of those that
were inferior to him. What alienation of his understanding was there from
knowing God, and of his will from loving him ! A debauch of all his
faculties ; a spiritual adultery, in preferring not only one of God's creatures,
but one of his desperate enemies, before him, thinking him a wiser coun-
sellor than infinite wisdom, and imagining him possessed with kinder afi"ec-
tions to him than that God who had newly created him. Thus he joins in
league with hell against heaven, with a fallen spirit against his bountiful
benefactor, and enters into society with rebels, that, just before, commenced
a war against his and their common sovereign. He did not only falter in,
but cast oft", the obedience due to his Creator, endeavoured to purloin his
glory, and actually murdered all those that were virtually in his loins : Rom.
v. 12, ' Sin entered into the world' by him, ' and death by sin, and passed
upon all men,' taking them off" from their subjection to God to be slaves to
the damned spirits, and heirs of their misery ; and, after all this, he adds a
foul imputation on God, taxing him as the author of his sin, and thereby
stains the beauty of his holiness. But, notwithstanding all this, God stops
not up the flood-gates of his goodness, nor doth he entertain fiery resolutions
against man, but brings forth a healing promise, and sends not an angel
upon commission to reveal it to him, but preaches it himself to this forlorn
and rebellious creature. Gen. iii. 15.

(2.) Could there be anything in this fallen creature to allure God to the
expression of his goodness ? Was there any good action in all his carriage
that could plead for a re-admission of him to his former state ? Was there
one good quality left that could be an orator to persuade divine goodness to
such a gracious procedure ? Was there any moral goodness in man, after
this debauch, that might be an object of divine love ? What was there in
him that was not rather a provocation than an allurement ? Could you ex-
pect that any perfection in God should find a motive in this ungrateful

328 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

apostate, to open a mouth for him, and be an advocate to support him, and
bring him off from a just tribunal ? Or, after divine goodness had begun to
pity and plead for man, is it not wonderful that it should not discontinue the
plea, afterlit found man's excuse to be as black as his crime, Gen. iii. 12, and
his carriage upon his examination to be as disobliging as his first revolt ?
It might well be expected that all the perfections in the divine nature would
have entered into an association eternally to treat this rebel according to his
deserts. What attractives were there in a silly worm, much less in such
complete wickedness, inexcusable enmity, infamous rebellion, to design a
redeemer for him, and such a person as the Son of God, to a fleshy body,
an eclipse of glory, and an ignominious cross ! The meanness of man was
further from alluring God to do it than the dignity of angels.

(3.) Was there not a world of demerit in man to animate grace as well as
wrath against him ? We were so far from deserving the opening any
streams of goodness, that we had merited floods of devouring wrath. What
were all men, but enemies to God in a high manner ? Every offence was
infinite, as being committed against a being of infinite dignity ; it was a
stroke at the very being of God ; a resistance of all his attributes ; it would
degrade him from the height and perfection of his nature ; it would not, by
its good will, suffer God to be God. If ' he that hates his brother is a mur-
derer ' of his brother, 1 John iii. 15, he that hates his Creator is a murderer
of the Deity ; and every ' carnal mind is enmity to God,' Rom. viii. 7 :
every sin envies him his authority by breaking his precept, and envies him his
goodness by defacing the marks of it. Every sin comprehends in it more
than men or angels can conceive; that God, who only hath the clear appre-
hensions of his own dignity, hath the sole clear apprehensions of sin's
malignity. All men were thus by nature ; those that sinned before the
coming of the Redeemer had been in a state of sin ; those that were to come
after him would be in a state of sin by their birth, and be criminals as soon
as ever they were creatures. All men, as well the glorified as those in the
flesh, at the coming of the Redeemer, and those that were to be born after,
were considered in a state of sin by God when he bruised the Redeemer for
them ; all were filthy and unworthy of the eye of God ; all had employed
the faculties of their souls, and the members of their bodies, which they en-
joyed by his goodness, against the interest of his glory. Every rational
creature had made himself a slave to those creatures over whom he had been
appointed a lord ; subjected himself as a servant to his inferior, and strutted
as a superior against his liberal sovereign, and by every sin rendered himself
more a child of Satan, and enemy of God, and more worthy of the curses of
the law and the torments of hell. Was it not, now, a mighty goodness that
would surmount those high mountains of demerit, and elevate such creatures
by the depression of his Son ? Had we been possessed of the highest holi-
ness, a reward had been the natural effect of goodness. It was not possible
that God should be unkind to a righteous and innocent creature ; his grace
would have crowned that which had been so agreeable to him ; he had been
a denier of himself had he numbered innocent creatures in the rank of the
miserable. But, to be kind to an enemy, to run counter to the vastness of
demerit in man, was a superlative goodness, a goodness triumphing above
all the provocations of men and pleas of justice. It was an abounding good-
ness of grace : ' Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,' uTggg-
m^IoGivsiv, Rom. v. 20. It swelled above the heights of sin, and triumphed
more than all his other attributes.

(4.) Man was reduced to the lowest condition. Our crimes had brought
us to the lowest calamity ; we were brought to the dust, and prepared for

Make X. 18. J god's goodness. 329

hell. Adam had not the boldness to request, and therefore we may judge
he had not the least hopes of pardon ; he was sunk under wrath, and could
have expected no better an entertainment than the tempter, whose solicitations
he submitted to. We had cast the diadem from our heads, and lost all our
original excellency ; we were lost to our own happiness, and lost to our
Creator's service, when he was so kind as to send his Son to seek us, Mat.
xviii. 11, and so hberal as to expend his blood for our cure and preservation.
How great was that goodness that would not abandon us in our misery, but
remit our crimes, and rescue our persons, and ransom our souls by so great
a price from the rights of justice, and horrors of hell, we were so fitted for !

(5.) Every age multiplied provocations. Every age of the world proved more
degenerate ; the traditions, which were purer and more lively among Adam's
immediate posterity, were more dark among his further descendants. Idolatry,
whereof we have no marks in the old world before the deluge, was fre-
quent afterwards in every nation ; not only the knowledge of the true God
was lost, but the natural reverential thoughts of a deity were expelled.
Hence gods were dubbed according to men's humours ; and not only human
passions, but brutish vices, ascribed to them. As by the fall we were be-
come less than men, so we would fancy God no better than a beast, since
beasts were worshipped as gods, Rom. i. 21 ; yea, fancied God no better
than a devil, since that destroyer was worshipped instead of the Creator,
and a homage paid to the powers of hell that ruined them, which was due
to the goodness of that benefactor who had made them and preserved them
in the world. The vilest creatures were deified ; reason was debased below
common sense ; and men adored one end of a log, while they warmed
themselves with the other, Isa. xliv. 14, 16, 17, as if that which was ordained
for the kitchen were a fit representation for God in the temple. Thus were
the natural notions of a deity depraved ; the whole world drenched in
idolatry ; and though the Jews were free from that gross abuse of God, yet
they were sunk also into loathsome superstitions, when the goodness of God
brought in his designed Redeemer and redemption into the world.

(6.) The impotence of man enhanceth this goodness. Our own eye did
scarce pity us, and it was impossible for our own hands to relieve us ; we
were insensible of our misery, in love with our death ; we courted our
chains, and the noise of our fettering lusts were our music, ' serving diverse
lusts and pleasures,' Tit. iii. 3. Our lusts were our pleasures ; Satan's
yoke was as delightful to us to bear as to him to impose. Instead of being
his opposers in his attempts against us, we were his voluntary seconds, and
every whit as willing to embrace, as he was to propose, his ruining tempta-
tions. As no man can recover himself from death, so no man can recover
himself from wrath ; he is as unable to redeem as to create himself ; he
might as soon have stripped himself of his being, as put an end to his
misery ; his captivity would have been endless, and his chains remediless,
for anything he could do to knock them off, and deliver himself ; he was too
much in love with the sink of sin to leave wallowing in it, and under too
powerful a hand to cease frying in the flames of wi-ath. As the law could
not be obeyed by man, after a corrupt principle had entered into him, so
neither could justice be satisfied by him after his transgression. The sinner
was indebted, but bankrupt ; as he was unable to pay a mite of that obedi-
ence he owed to the precept, because of his enmity, so he was unable to
satisfy what he owed to the penalty, because of his feebleness. He was as
much without love to observe the one, as ' without strength ' to bear the
other. He could not, because of his enmity, ' be subject to the law,' Rom.
viii. 7 ; or compensate for his sin, because he was ' without strength,' Rom.

830 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

V. 6. His strength to offend was great, but to deliver himself a mere no-
thing. Repentance was not a thing known by man after the fall, till he had
hopes of redemption ; and if he had known and exercised it, what compen-
sation are the tears of a malefactor for an injury done to the crown, and at-
tempting the life of his pi'ince ? How great was divine goodness, not only
to pity men in this state, but to provide a redeemer for them ! * 0 Lord,
my strength and my redeemer,' said the psalmist, Ps. xix. 14. When he
found out a redeemer for our misery, he found out a strength for our im-
potency.

To conclude this ; behold the goodness of God, when we had thus un-
handsomely dealt with him, had nothing to allure his goodness, multi-
tudes of provocations to incense him, were reduced to a condition as low as
could be, fit to [be] the matter of his scoffs, and the sport of divine justice,
and so weak that we could not repair our own ruins ; then did he open a foun-
tain of fresh goodness in the death of his Son, and sent forth such delightful
streams as, in our original creation, we could never have tasted ; not only
overcame the resentments of a provoked justice, but magnified itself by our
lowness, and strengthened itself by our weakness. His goodness had before
created an innocent, but here it saves a malefactor ; and sends his Son to
die for us, as if the Holy of holies were the criminal, and the rebel the in-
nocent. It had been a pompous goodness, to have given him as a king ;
but a goodness of gi-eater grandeur, to expose him as a sacrifice for slaves
and enemies. Had Adam remained innocent, and proved thankful for what
he had received, it had been great goodness to have brought him to glory ;
but to bring filthy and rebellious Adam to it, surmounts, by unexpressible
degrees, that sort of goodness he had experimented before ; since it was not
from a light evil, a tolerable curse unawares brought upon us, but from the
yoke we had willingly submitted to, from the power of darkness we had
courted, and the furnace of wrath we had kindled for ourselves. What are we,
dead dogs, that he should behold us with so gracious an eye ? This good-
ness is thus enhanced, if you consider the state of man in his first transgres-
sion, and after.

4. This goodness further appears in the high advancement of our nature,
after it had so highly offended. By creation we had an affinity with animals
in our bodies, with angels in our spirits, with God in his image ; but not
with God in our nature, till the incarnation of the Redeemer. Adam, by
creation, was the son of God, Luke iii. 38; but his natui'e was not one with
the person of God. He was his son as created by him, but had no affinity
to him b}^ virtue of union with him ; but now man doth not only see his
nature in multitudes of men on earth, but by an astonishing goodness, beholds
his nature united to the Deity in heaven. That as he was the son of God
by creation, he is now the brother of God by redemption ; for with such a
title doth that person, who was the Son of God as well as the Son of man,
honour his disciples, John xx. 17 ; and because he is of the same nature
with them, 'he is not ashamed to call them brethren,' Heb. ii. 11.

Our nature, which was infinitely distant from and below the Deity, now
makes one person with the Son of God. What man sinfully aspired to, God
hath graciously granted, and more. Man aspired to a likeness in knowledge,
and God hath granted him an affinity in union. It had been astonishing
goodness to angelize our natures ; but in redemption divine goodness hath
acted higher, in a sort to deify our natures. In creation, our nature was
exalted above other creatures on earth ; in our redemption, our nature is
exalted above all the host of heaven. We were higher than the beasts, as
creatures, but * lower than the angels,' Ps. viii. 5 ; but by the incarnation of

Maek X. 18.] god's goodness. 331

the Son of God our nature is elevated many steps above them. After it had
sunk itself by corruption below the bestial nature, and as low as the diabo-
lical, the ' fulness of the Godhead dwells in our nature bodily,' Col. ii. 9 ;
but never in the angels angeUcally. The Son of God descended to dignify
our nature, by assuming it ; and ascended with our nature, to have it
crowned above those standing monuments of divine power and goodness.
That person that descended in our nature into the grave, and in the same
nature was raised up again, is in that same nature set at the right hand of
God in heaven, ' far above all principality, and power, and might, and do-
minion, and every name that is named,' Eph. i. 20, 21. Our refined clay,
by an indissoluble union with this divine person, is honoured to sit for ever
upon a throne above all the tribes of seraphims and cherubims ; and the
person that wears it is the head of the good angels, and the conqueror of
the bad : the one are put under his feet, and the other commanded to adore
him ' that purged our sins in our nature,' Heb. i. 3, 6. That divine person
in our nature receives adoration from the angels ; but the nature of man is
not ordered to pay any homage and adorations to the angels. How could
divine goodness to man more magnify itself ? As we could not have a lower
descent than we had by sin, how could we have a higher ascent than by a
substantial participation of a divine life in our nature in the unity of a divine
person ? Our earthly nature is joined to a heavenly person ; our undone
nature united to ' one equal with God,' Phil. ii. 6. It may truly be said,
that man is God, which is infinitely more glorious for us, than if it could be
said, man' is an angel. If it were goodness to advance our innocent nature
above other creatures, the advancement of our degenerate nature above
angels deserves a higher title than mere goodness. It is a more gracious
act, than if all men had been transformed into the pure spuitual nature of
the loftiest cherubins.

5. This goodness is manifest in the covenant of grace made with us,
whereby we are freed from the rigour of that of works. God might have in-
sisted upon the terms of the old covenant, and required of man the improve-
ment of his original stock ; but God hath condescended to lower terms, and
offered man more gracious methods, and mitigated the rigour of the first by
the sweetness of the second.

(1.) It is goodness, that he should condescend to make another covenant
with man. To stipulate with innocent and righteous Adam for his obedi-
ence, was a stoop of his sovereignty ; though he gave the precept as a
sovereign Lord, yet in his covenanting he seems to descend to some kind of
equality with that dust and ashes with whom he treated. Absolute sove-
reigns do not usually covenant with their people, but exact obedience and
duty without binding themselves to bestow a reward ; and if they intend
any, they reserve the purpose in their own breasts, without treating their
subjects with a solemn declaration of it. There was no obligation on God
to enter into the first covenant ; much less, after the violation of the first, to
the settlement of a new. If God seemed in some sort to equal himself to
man in the first, he seemed to descend below himself in treating with a
rebel upon more condescending terms in the second. If his covenant with
innocent Adam was a stoop of his sovereignty, this with rebellious Adam
seems to be a stripping himself of his majesty in favour of his goodness ; as
if his happiness depended upon us, and not ours upon him. It is a ' humi-
liation of himself to behold the things in heaven,' the glorious angels, as
well as ' things on earth,' mortal men, Ps. cxiii. 6 ; much more to bind
himself in gracious bonds to the glorious angels, and much more if to rebel
man. In the first covenant, there was much of sovereignty as well as good-

832 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

ness ; in the second, there is less of sovereignty and more of grace. In the
first, there was a righteous man for a holy God ; in the second, a polluted
creature for a pure and provoked God. In the first, he holds the sceptre in
his hand to rule his subjects ; in the second, he seems to lay by his sceptre
to court and espouse a beggar. In the first, he is a Lord ; in the second, a
husband, Hosea ii. 18-20, and binds himself upon gracious conditions to
become a debtor. How should this goodness fill us with an humble aston-
ishment, as it did Abraham, when he ' fell on his face,' when he heard God
speaking of making a covenant with him ! Gen. xvii. 2, 3. And if God
speaking to Israel out of the fire, and making them to hear his voice out of
heaven, that he might instruct them, was a consideration whereby Moses
would heighten their admiration of divine goodness, and engage their afiec-
tionate obedience to him, Deut. iv. 32, 36, 40, how much more admirable
is it for God to speak so kindly to us through the pacifying blood of the
covenant, that silenced the terrors of the old, and settled the tenderness of
the new !

(2.) His goodness is seen in the nature and tenor of the new covenant.
There are in this richer streams of love and pity. The language of one
was, Die if thou sin; that of the other, Live if thou believest.* The old
covenant was founded upon the obedience of man ; the new is not founded
upon the inconstancy of man's will, but the firmness of divine love, and the
valuable merit of Christ. The head of the first covenant was human and
mutable ; the head of the second is divine and immutable. The curse due
to us by the breach of the first, is taken ofi' by the indulgence of the second,
Kom. viii. 1 ; we are by it snatched fi'om the jaws of the law, to be wrapped
up in the bosom of grace, — ' For you are not under the law, but under grace,'
Kom. vi. 14, — from the curse and condemnation of the law to the sweetness
and forgiveness of grace. Christ bore the one, ' being made a curse for us,'
Gal. iii. 13, that we might enjoy the sweetness of the other. By this we
are brought from mount Sinai, the mount of terror, to mount Zion, the
mount of sacrificing, the type of the great sacrifice, Heb. xii. 18, 22. That
covenant brought in death upon one oflence, this covenant offers life after
many offences, Rom. v. 16, 17. That involved us in a curse, and this en-
richeth us with a blessing. The breaches of that expelled us out of para-
dise, and the embracing of this admits us into heaven. This covenant
demands and admits of that repentance, whereof there was no mention in
the first ; that demanded obedience, not repentance upon a failure, and
though the exercises of it had been never so deep in the fallen creature,
nothing of the law's severity had been remitted by any virtue of it. Again,
the first covenant demanded exact righteousness, but conveyed no cleansing
virtue upon the contracting any filth. The first demands a continuance in
the righteousness conferred in creation ; the second imprints a gracious
heart in regeneration. ' I will pour clean water upon you, I will put a new
spirit within you,' was the voice of the second covenant, not of the first.
Again, as to pardon ; Adam's covenant was to punish him, not to pardon
him, if he feU. That threatened death upon transgression, this remits it ;
that was an act of divine sovereignty, declaring the will of God, this is an
act of divine grace, passing an act of oblivion on the crimes of the creature ;
that, as it demanded no repentance upon a failure, so it promised no mercy
upon guilt ; that convened our sin, and condemned us for it, this clears our
guilt, and comforts us under it. The first covenant related us to God as a
judge, every transgression against it forfeited his indulgence as a father ;
the second delivers us from God as a condemning judge, to bring us under
* Turretine, ser. p. 33.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 333

his wing as an affectionate father. In the one, there was a dreadful frown
to scare us ; in the other, a heaHng wing to cover and reHeve us. Again, in
regard of righteousness. That demanded our performance of a righteous-
ness in and by ourselves and our own strength ; this demands our acceptance
of a righteousness higher than ever the standing angels had. The right-
eousness of the first covenant was the righteousness of a man ; the righteous-
ness of the second is * the righteousness of a God, 2 Cor. v. 21. Again,
in regard of that obedience it demands, it exacts not of us, as a necessary
condition, the perfection of obedience, but the sincerity of obedience ; an
uprightness in our intention, not an unspottedness in our action ; an in-
tegrity in our aims, and an industry in our compliance with divine precepts,
Gen. xvii. 1, 'Walk before me, and be thou perfect,' i.e. sincere. What
is hearty in our actions is accepted, and what is defective is overlooked,
and not charged upon us, because of the obedience and righteousness of our
surety. The first covenant rejected all our services after sin — the services
of a person under the sentence of death are but dead services ; this accepts
our imperfect services after faith in it. That administered no strength to
obey, but supposed it ; this supposeth our inability to obey, and confers
some strength for it, Ezek. xxxvi. 27, ' I will put my Spirit within you,
and cause you to walk in my statutes.' Again, in regard of the promises.
The old covenant had good, but the new hath ' better promises,' Heb. viii. 6
of justification after guilt, and sanctification after filth, and glorification
at last of the whole man. In the first there was provision against guilt,
but none for the removal of it ; provision against filth, but none for the
cleansing of it ; promise of happiness implied, but not so great a one as
that * life and immortality ' in heaven, ' brought to light by the gospel,'
2 Tim. i. 10. Why said to be ' brought to light by the gospel ? ' Because
it was not only buried upon the fall of man under the curses of the law, but
it was not so obvious to the conceptions of man in his innocent state.
Life, indeed, was implied to be promised upon his standing, but not so
glorious an immortality disclosed to be reserved for him if he stood. As it
is a covenant of better promises, so a covenant of sweeter comforts, com-
forts more choice and comforts more durable. ' An everlasting consolation
and a good hope ' are the fruits of grace, i. e. the covenant of grace,
2 Thess. ii. 16. In the whole there is such a love disclosed, as cannot be
expressed. The apostle leaves it to every man's mind to conceive it, if he
could, ' what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God,' 1 John iii. 1. It instates us in such a
manner of the love of God, as he bears to his Son, the image of his person :
' That the world may know that thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved
me,' John xvii. 23.

(3.) This goodness appears in the choice gift of himself which he hath
made over in this covenant. You know how it runs in Scripture, ' I will be
their God and they shall be my people,' Jer. xxxii. 38 ; a propriety in the
Deity is made over by it. As he gave the blood of his Son to seal the cove-
nant, so he gave himself as the blessing of the covenant : ' He is not ashamed
to be called their God,' Heb. xi. 16. Though he be environed with millions
of angels, and presides over them in an inexpressible glory, he is not ashamed
of his condescensions to man, and to pass over himself as the propriety of
his people, as well as to take them to bo his. It is a diminution of the
sense of the place, to understand it of God as creator. What reason was
there for God to be ashamed of the expressions of his power, wisdom, good-
ness, in the works of his hands ? But we might have reason to think there
might be some ground in God to be ashamed in making himself over in a

834 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

deed of gift to a mean worm and a filthy rebel ; this might seem a disparage-
ment to his majesty ; but God is not ashamed of a title so mean, as the God
of his despised people — a title below those others of the ' Lord of hosts,'
* glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders,' * riding on the
wings of the wind,' ' walking in the circuits of heaven.' He is no more
ashamed of this title of being our God, than he is of those other that sound
more glorious ; he would rather have his greatness veil to his goodness, than
his goodness be confined by his majesty. He is not only our God, but our
God as he is the God of Christ. He is not ashamed to be our propriety,
and Christ is not ashamed to own his people in a partnership with him in
this propriety : John xx. 17, ' I ascend to my God, and your God.' This
of God's being our God, is the quintessence of the covenant, the soul of all
the promises. In this he hath promised whatsoever is infinite in him, what-
soever is the glory and ornament of his nature, for our use ; not a part of
him, or one single perfection, but the whole vigour and strength of all. As
he is not a God without infinite wisdom, and infinite power, and infinite
goodness, and infinite blessedness, &c, so he passes over in this covenant all
that which presents him as the most adorable being to his creatures. He
will be to them as great, as wise, as powerful, as good as he is in himself. And
the assuring us in this covenant to be our God, imports also that he will do
as much for us as we would do for ourselves, were we furnished with the
same goodness, power, and wisdom. In being our God, he testifies it is all
one, as if we had the same perfections in our own power to employ for our
use ; for, he being possessed with them, it is as much as if we ourselves
were possessed with them for our own advantage, according to the rules of
wisdom, and the several conditions we pass through for his glory ; but this
must be taken with a relation to that wisdom which he observes in his pro-
ceedings with us as creatures, and according to the several conditions we pass
through for his glory. Thus God's being ours, is more than if all heaven and
earth were ours besides ; it is more than if we were fully our own, and at our
own disposal ; it makes all things that God hath ours, 1 Cor. iii. 22, and
therefore not only all things he hath created, but all things that he can create ;
not only all things that he hath contrived, but all things that he can con-
trive ; for in being ours, his power is ours, his possible power as well as
his active power, his power whereby he can efi"ect more than he hath done ;
and his wisdom, whereby he can contrive more than he hath done, so that
if there were need of employing his power to create many worlds for our good,
he would not stick at it ; for if he did, he would not be our God in the ex-
tent of his nature, as the promise intimates. What a rich goodness and a
fulness of bounty is there in this short expression, as full as the expression
of a God can make it to be intelligible to such creatures as we are !

(4.) This goodness is further manifest in the confirmation of the covenant.
His goodness did not only condescend to make it for our happiness, after we
had made ourselves miserable, but further condescended to ratify it in the
solemnest manner for our assurance, to overrule all the despondencies unbe-
lief could raise up in our souls. The reason why he confirmed it by an oath
was to shew the immutability of his glorious counsel, not to tie himself to
keep it ; for his word and promise is in itself as immutable as his oath. They
were ' two immutable things,' his word and his oath, one as unchangeable as
the other ; but for the strength of our consolation, that it might have no
reason to shake and totter, he would condescend as low as was possible for a
God to do for the satisfaction of the dejected creature, Heb. vi. 17, 18. When
the first covenant was broken, and it was impossible for man to fulfil the
terms of it, and mount to happiness thereby, he makes another. And as if

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 835

we had reason to distrust him in the first, he solemnly ratifies it in a higher
manner than he had done in the other, and swears by himself that he will
be true to it, not so much out of an election of himself as the object of the
oath. ' Because he could not swear by a greater, he swears by himself,' ver.
13 ; whereby the apostle clearly intimates that divine goodness was raised to
such a height for us, that if there had been anything more sacred than him-
self, or that could have punished him if he had broken it, that he would have
sworn by, to silence any diffidence in us, and confirm us in the reality of
his intentions. Now if it were a mighty mark of goodness for God to stoop
to a covenanting with us, it was more for a sovereign to bind himself so
solemnly to be our debtor in a promise, as well as he was our sovereign in
the precept, and stoop so low in it to satisfy the distrusts of that creature
that deserved for ever to lie soaking in his own ruins for not believing his
bare word. What absolute prince would ever stoop so low as to article
with rebellious subjects, whom he could in a moment set his foot upon and
crush, much less countenance a causeless distrust of his goodness by the addi-
tion of his oath, and thereby bind his own hands, which were unconfined
before, and free to do what he pleased with them !

(5.) This goodness of God is remarkable also in the condition of this
covenant, which is faith. This was the easiest condition in its own nature
that could be imagined, no difficulty in it but what proceeds from the pride
of man's nature and the obstinacy of his will. It was not impossible in
itself, it was not the old condition of perfect obedience ; it had been mighty
goodness to set us up again upon our old stock, and restore us to the tenor
and condition of the covenant of works, or to have required the burdensome
ceremonies of the law. Nor is it an exact knowledge he requires of us ; all
men's understandings being of a difterent size, they had not been capable
of this. It was the most reasonable condition in regard of the excellency of
the things proposed, and the effects following upon it, nay, it was necessary.
It had been a want of goodness to himself and his own honour ; he had cast
that off" had he not insisted on this condition of faith, it being the lowest he
could condescend to with a salvo for his glory. And it was a goodness to us ; it
is nothing else he requires, but a willingness to accept what he hath contrived
and acted for us. And no man can be happy against his*,will ; without this be-
lief at least, man could never voluntary have arrived to his happiness. The
goodness of God is evidenced in that,

[1.] First, It is an easy condition, not impossible.

First, It was not the condition of the old covenant. The condition of
that was an entire obedience to every precept with a man's whole strength,
without any flaw or crack ; but the condition of the evangelical covenant is
a sincere though weak faith. He hath suited this covenant to the misery of
man's fallen condition ; he considers our weakness, and that we are but dust,
and therefore exacts not of us an entire but a sincere obedience. Had God sent
Christ to expiate the crime of Adam, restore him to his paradise estate, and
repair in man the ruined image of hohness, and after this to have renewed
the covenant of works for the future, and settled the same condition in
exacting a complete obedience for the time to come, divine goodness had
been above any accusation, and had deserved our highest admiration in the
pardon of former transgressions, and giving out to us our first stock. But
divine goodness took larger strides ; he had tried our first condition, and
found his mutable creature quickly to violate it. Had he demanded the
same now, it is likely it had met with the same issue as before in man's dis-
obedience and fall ; we ahould have been ' as men,' as Adam, * transgress-
ing the covenant,' Hos. vi. 7, and then we must have lain groaning under

336 chaknock's works. [Mark X. 18.

our disease and wallowing in our blood, unless Christ had come to die for
the expiation of our new crimes, for every transgression had been a viola-
tion of that covenant, and a forfeiture of our right to the benefits of it. If
we had broke it but in one tittle, we had rendered ourselves incapable to
fulfil it for the future ; that one transgression had stood as a bar against the
pleas of after obedience. But God hath wholly laid that condition aside to
us, and settled that of faith, more easy to be performed and to be renewed
by us. It is infinite grace in him that he will accept of faith in us, instead
of that perfect obedience he required of us in the covenant of works.

Secondly, It is easy; not like the burdensome ceremonies appointed
under the law. He exacts not now the legal obedience, expensive sacrifices,
troublesome purifications and abstinences, that ' yoke of bondage,' Gal. v. 1,
which they were ' not able to bear,' Acts xv. 10. He treats us not as ser-
vants, or children in their nonage, under the elements of the world, nor
requires those innumerable bodily exercises that he exacted of them ; he
demands not thousands of lambs and rivers of oil, but he requires a sincere
confession and repentance in order to our absolution ; an unfeigned faith in
order to our blessedness and elevation to a glorious life. He requires only
that we should beheve what he saith, and have so good an opinion of his
goodness and veracity as to persuade ourselves of the reality of his inten-
tions, confide in his word, and rely upon his promise, cordially embrace his
crucified Son, whom he hath set forth as the means of our happiness, and
have a sincere respect to all the discoveries of his will. What can be more
easy than this, though some in the days of the apostles, and others since,
have endeavoured to introduce a multitude of legal burdens, as if they envied
God the expressions of his goodness, or thought him guilty of too much
remissness in taking ofi" the yoke, and treating man too favourably.

Thirdly, Nor is it a clear knowledge of every revelation that is the con-
dition of this covenant. God in his kindness to man hath made revelations
of himself, but his goodness is manifested in obliging us to believe him, not
fully to understand him. He hath made them by sufiicient testimonies as
clear to our faith as they are incomprehensible to our reason. He hath
revealed a trinity of persons in their distinct offices in the business of redemp-
tion, without which revelation of a trinity we could not have a right notion
and scheme of redeeming grace. But since the clearness of men's under-
standing is sullied by the fall, and hath lost its wings to fly up to a know-
ledge of such sublime things as that of the Trinity, and other mysteries of
the Christian religion, God hath manifested his goodness in not obliging
us to understand them, but to believe them, and hath given us reason enough
to believe it to be his revelation (both from the nature of the revelation itself,
and the way and manner of propagating it, which is wholly divine, exceeding
all the methods of human art), though he hath not extended our under-
standings to a capacity to know them, and render a reason of every mystery.
He did not require of every Israelite, or of any of them that were stung by
the fiery serpents, that they should understand, or be able to discourse of
the nature and qualities of that brass of which that serpent upon the pole
was made, or by what art that serpent was formed, or in what manner the
sight of it did operate in them for their cure ; it was enough that they did
believe the institution and precept of God, and that their own cure was
assured by it. It was enough if they cast their eyes upon it according to
the direction. The understandings of men are of several sizes and elevations,
one higher than another. If the condition of this covenant had been a great-
ness of knowledge, the most acute men had only enjoyed the benefits of it.
But it is faith, which is as easy to be performed by the ignorant and simple

M-iKK X. 18.] god's goodness. 337

as by the strongest and most towering mind. It is that which is within the
compass of every man's understanding. God did not require that every one
within the verge of the covenant should be able to discourse of it to the rea-
sons of men. He required not that every man should be a philosopher, or
an orator, but a believer. What could be more easy than to lift up the eye
to the brazen serpent, to be cured of a fiery sting ? What conld be more
facile than a glance, which is done without any pain and in a moment ? It
is a condition may be performed by the weakest as well as the strongest.
Could those that were bitten in the most vital part cast up their eyes,
though at the last gasp, they would arise to health, by the expulsion of the
venom.

[2. J As it is easy, so it is reasonable. 'Repent and believe' is that
which is required by Christ and the apostles for the enjoyment of the king-
dom of heaven. It is very reasonable that things so great and glorious, so
beneficial to men, and revealed to them by so sound an authority, and an
unerring truth, should be believed. The excellency of the thing disclosed
could admit of no lower a condition than to be believed and embraced.
There is a sort of faith that is a natural condition in everything. All reli-
gion in the world, though never so false, depends upon a sort of it ; for
unless there be a belief of future things, there would never be a hope of
good or a feaf of evil, the two great hinges upon which religion moves. In
all kinds of learning, many things must be believed before a progress can be
made. Belief of one another is necessary in all acts of human life, without
which human society would be unlinked and dissolved. What is that faith
that God requires of us in this covenant, but a willingness of soul to take
God for our God, Christ for our mediator and the procurer of our happi-
ness? Rev. xxii. 17. What prince could require less, upon any promise he
makes his subjects, than to be believed as true, and depended on as good ?
That they should accept his pardon, and other gracious olfers, and be sin-
cere in their allegiance to him, avoiding all things that may oifend him, and
pursuing all things that may please him. Thus God, by so small and rea-
sonable a condition as faith, lets in the fruits of Christ's death into our soul,
and wraps us up in the fruition of all the privileges purchased by it. So
much he hath condescended in his goodness, that upon so slight a condition
we may plead his promise, and humbly challenge, by virtue of the covenant,
those good things he hath promised in his word. It is so reasonable a con-
dition, that if God did not require it in the covenant of grace, the creature
were obliged to perform it ; for the publishing any truth from God naturally
calls for credit to be given it by the creature, and an entertainment of it in
practice. Could you offer a more reasonable condition yourselves, had it
been left to your choice ? Should a prince proclaim a pardon to a profli-
gate wretch, would not all the world cry shame of him if he did not believe
it upon the highest assurances ; and if ingenuity did not make him sorry for
his crimes, and careful in the duty of a subject, surely the world would cry
shame of such a person.

[3.1 It is a necessary condition.

Fir.ft, Necessary for the honour of God. A prince is disparaged if his
authority in his law, and if his graciousness in his promises, be not accepted
and believed. WTiat physician would undertake a cure, if his precepts may
not be credited ? It is the first thing in the order of nature that the reve-
lation of God should be believed, that the reality of his intentions in invit-
ing man to the acceptance of those methods he hath prescribed for their
attaining their chief happiness should be acknowledged. It is a debasing
notion of God, that he should give a happiness purchased by divine blood

VOL. II. Y

338 charnock's woeks. [Mark X. 18.

to a person that hath no value for it, nor any abhorrency of those sins that
occasioned so great a suffering, nor any will to avoid them. Should he not
vilify himself, to bestow a heaven upon that man that will not believe the
offers of it, nor walk in those ways that leads to it ; that walks so as if he
would declare that there were no truth in his word, nor holiness in his
nature ? Would not God by such an act verify a truth in the language of
their practice, viz., that he were both false and impure, careless of his word,
and negligent of his holiness ? As God was so desirous to ensure the con-
solation of believers, that if there had been a greater being than himself to
attest, and for him to be responsible to, for the confirmation of his promise,
he would willingly have submitted to him, and have made him the umpire :
Heb. vi. 19, 'He swore by himself, because he could not swear by a greater ;'
by the same reason, had it stood with the majesty and wisdom of God to
stoop to lower conditions in this covenant for the reducing of man to his
duty and happiness, he would have done it ; but his goodness could not take
lower steps, with the preservation of the rights of his majesty and the honour
of his wisdom. Would you have had him wholly submitted to the obstinate
will of a rebellious creature, and be ruled only by his terms ? Would you
have had him receive men to happiness, after they had heightened their
crimes by a contempt of his grace, as well as of his creating goodness, and
have made them blessed under the guilt of their crimes without an acknow-
ledgment ? Should he glorify one that will not believe what he hath
revealed, nor repent of what himself hath committee!, and so. save a man
after a repeated unthankfulness to the most immense grace that ever was,
or can be discovered and offered, without a detestation of his ingratitude,
and a voluntary acceptance of his offers ? It is necessary for the honour of
God that man should accept of his terms, and not give laws to him, to whom
he is obnoxious as a guilty person, as well as subject as a creature.

Again, it was very equitable and necessary for the honour of God, that
since man fell by an unbelief of his precept and threatening, he should not
rise again without a belief of his promise, and casting himself upon his truth
in that, since he had vilified the honour of his truth in the threatening.
Since man in his fall would lean to his own understanding against God, it
is fit that, in his recovery, the highest powers of his soul, his understanding
and will, should be subjected to him in an entire resignation. Now, whereas
knowledge seems to have a power over its object, faith is a full submission
to that which is the object of it. Since man intended a glorying in him-
self, the evangelical covenant directs its whole battery against it, that men
may glory in nothing but divine goodness, 1 Cor. i. 29-31. Had man
performed exact obedience by his own strength, he had had something in
himself as the matter of his glory. And though after the fall grace made
itself illustrious in setting him up upon a new stock, yet had the same con-
dition of exact obedience been settled in the same manner, man would have
had something to glory in, which is struck off wholly by faith ; whereby
man in every act must go out of himself, for a supply, to that mediator which
divine goodness and grace hath appointed.

Secondly, It is necessary for the happiness of man. That can be no con-
tenting condition wherein the will of man doth not concur. He that is
forced to the most delicious diet, or to wear the bravest apparel, or to be
stored with abundance of treasure, cannot be happy in those things without
an esteem of them and delight in them. If they be nauseous to him, the
indisposition of his mind is a dead fly in those boxes of precious ointment.
Now faith being a sincere willingness to accept of Christ and to come to
God by him, and repentance being a detestation of that which made man's

Mark X. 18.J god's goodness. 339

separation from God, it is impossible he could be voluntarily happy without
it. Man cannot attain and enjoy a true happiness without an operation of
his understanding about the object proposed, and the means appointed to
enjoy it. There must be a knowledge of what is offered, and of the way of
it, and such a knowledge as may determine the will to affect that end and
embrace those means ; which the will can never do till the understanding be
fully persuaded of the truth of the offerer, and the goodness of the proposal
itself, and the conveniency of the means for the attaining of it. It is neces-
sary in the nature of the thing, that what is revealed should be believed to
be a divine revelation. God must be judged true in the promising justifica-
tion and sanctification, the means of happiness ; and if any man desires to
be partaker of those promises, he must desire to be sanctified ; and how
can he desire that which is the matter of those promises, if he wallow in his
own lusts, and desire to do so, a thing repugnant to the promise itself?
Would you have God force man to be happy against his will ? Is it not
very reasonable he should demand the consent of his reasonable creature to
that blessedness he offers him ? The new covenant is a marriage covenant,
Hosea ii. 16, 19, 20, which implies a consent on our parts, as well as a
consent on God's part ; that is no marriage that hath not the consent of
both parties. Now faith is our actual consent, and repentance and sincere
obedience are the testimonies of the truth and reality of this consent.

(6.) Divine goodness is eminent in his methods of treating with men to
embrace this covenant. They are methods of gentleness and sweetness ; it
is a wooing goodness and a bewailing goodness. His expressions are with
strong motions of affection ; he carrieth not on the gospel by force of arms ;
he doth not solely menace men into it, as worldly conquerors have done ; he
doth not, as Mahomet, plunder men's estates, and wound their bodies, to
imprint a religion on their souls ; he doth not erect gibbets, and kindle
faggots, to scare men to an entering into covenant with him. What multi-
tudes might he have raised by his power as well as others ! What legions
of angels might he have rendezvoused from heaven, to have beaten men into
a profession of the gospel ! Nor doth he only interpose his sovereign autho-
rity in the precept of faith, but useth rational expostulations to move men
voluntarily to comply with his proposals : Isa. i. 18, ' Come now, saith the
Lord, let us reason together.' He seems to call heaven and earth to be judge,
whether he had been wanting in any reasonable ways of goodness, to over-
come the perversity of the creature : Isa. i. 2, ' Hear, 0 heavens, and give
ear, 0 earth, I have nourished and brought up children.' What various
encouragements doth he use, agreeable to the nature of men, endeavouring
to persuade them with all tenderness not to despise their own mercies, and
be enemies to their own happiness ! He would allure us by his beauty, and
win us by his mercy. He uses the arms of his own excellency, and our
necessity, to prevail upon us ; and this after the highest provocations. When
Adam had trampled upon his creating goodness, it was not crushed ; and when
man had cast it from him, it took the higher rebound. When the rebel's
provocation was fresh in his mind, he sought him out with a promise in his
hand, though Adam fled from him out of enmity as well as fear. Gen. iii. 10;
and when the Jews had outraged his Son, whom he loved from eternity, and
made the Lord of heaven and earth bow down his head like a slave on the
cross, yet in that place where the most horrible wickedness had been com-
mitted, must the gospel be preached. The law must ' go forth out of that
Sion,' and the apostles must not stir from thence, till they have received the
promise of the Spirit, and published the word of grace in that ungrateful city,
whose inhabitants yet swelled with indignation against the Lord of life, and

340 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

the doctrine he had preached among them, Luke xxiv. 47. He would over-
look their indignities out of tenderness to their souls, and expose the apostles
to the peril of their lives, rather than expose his enemies to the fury of the
devil, Acts i. 4, 5.

[1.] How affectionately doth he invite men ! What multitudes of alluring
promises, and pressing exhortations, are there everywhere sprinkled in the
Scripture, and in such a passionate manner, as if God were solely concerned
in our good, without a glance on his own glory ! How tenderly doth he woo
flinty hearts, and express more pity to them than they do to themselves I
With what affection do his bowels rise up to his lips in his speech in the pro-
phet ! Isa. li. 4, ' Hearken to me, 0 my people, and give ear unto me, 0 my
nation ' ; ' my people ' ! ' my nation ' ! Melting expressions of a tender God,
soliciting a rebellious people to make their retreat to him. He never emptied
his hand of his bounty, nor divested his lips of those charitable expressions.
He sent Noah to move the wicked of the old world to an embracing of his
goodness, and frequent prophets to the provoking Jews ; and as the world con-
tinued, and grew up to a taller stature in sin, he stoops more in the manner
of his expressions. Never was the world at a higher pitch of idolatry than
at the first publishing the gospel, yet when we should have expected him to
be a punishing, he is a beseeching, God. The apostle fears not to use the
expression for the glory of divine goodness : 2 Cor. v. 20, ' We are ambas-
sadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us.' The beseeching
voice of God is in the voice of the ministry, as the voice of the prince is in
that of the herald. It is as if divine goodness did kneel down to a sinner
with wringed hands and blubbered cheeks, entreating him not to force him
to re-assume a tribunal of justice in the nature of a judge, since he would
treat with man upon a throne of grace in the nature of a father ; yea, he
seems to put himself into the posture of the criminal, that the offending
creature might not feel the punishment due to a rebel. It is not the con-
descension, but the interest, of a traitor to creep upon his knees in sackcloth
to his sovereign to beg his life ; but it is a miraculous goodness in the sove-
reign to creep in the lowest posture to the rebel, to importune him not only
for an amity to him, but a love to his own life and happiness. This he doth
not only in' his general proclamations, but in his particular wooings, those
inward courtings of his Spirit, soliciting them with more diligence (if they
would observe it) to their happiness, than the devil tempts them to the ways
of their misery. As he was first in Christ, reconciling the world, when the
world looked not after him, so he is first in his Spirit, wooing the world to
accept of that reconciliation when the world will not listen to him. How
often doth he flash up the light of nature and the light of the word in men's
hearts, to move them not to lie down in sparks of their own kindling, but to
aspire to a better happiness, and prepare them to be subject to a higher
mercy, if they would improve his present entreaties to such an end ! And
what are his threatenings designed for, but to move the wheel of our fears,
that the wheel of our desire and love might be set on motion for the em-
bracing his promise ? They are not so much the thunders of his justice as
the loud rhetoric of his good will, to prevent men's misery under the vials of
wrath. It is his kindness to scare men by threatenings, that justice might
not strike them with the sword. It is not the destruction, but the preserv-
ing reformation that he aims at ; he hath ' no pleasure in the death of the
•wicked;' this he confirms by his oath, Ezek. xxxiii. 11. His threatenings
are gracious expostulations with them: ' Why will ye die, 0 house of Israel?'
They are like the noise a favourable officer makes in the street, to warn the
criminal he comes to seize upon to make his escape ; he never used his

Make X. 18.] god's goodness. 341

justice to crush men, till he had used his kindness to allure them. All the
dreadful descriptions of a future wrath, as well as the lively descriptions of
the happiness of another world, are designed to persuade men. The honey
of his goodness is in the bowels of those roaring lions ; such pains doth Good-
ness take with men, to make them candidates for heaven.

[2.] How readily doth he receive men when they do return ! We have
David's experience for it, Ps. sxxii. 5 : * I said, I will confess my transgres-
sions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.' A
sincere look from the creature draws out his arms, and opens his bosom ;
he is ready with his physic to heal us upon a resolution to acquaint him
with our disease, and by his medicines prevents the putting our resolution
into a petition. The psalmist adds a Selah to it, as a special note of thank-
fulness for divine goodness. He doth not only stand ready to receive our
petitions while we are speaking, but ' answers us before we call,' Isa. Ixv.
2-4 ; listening to the motions of our hearts, as well as to the supplications
of our lips. He is the true Father, that hath a quicker pace in meeting
than the prodigal hath in returning, who would not have his embraces
and caresses interrupted by his confession, Luke xv. 20-22. The con-
fession follows, doth not precede, the father's compassion. How doth he
rejoice in having an opportunity to express his grace, when he hath prevailed
with a rebel to throw down his arms and lie at his feet, and this because
* he delights in mercy,' Micah vii. 18; he delights in the expressions of it
from himself, and the acceptance of it by his creature.

[3.] How meltingly doth he bewail man's wilful refusal of his goodness !
It is a mighty goodness to ofier grace to a rebel, a mighty goodness to give
it him after he hath a while stood off from the terms ; an astonishing good-
ness to regret and lament his wilful perdition. He seems to utter those
words in a sigh, Ps. Ixxxi. 13, * Oh that my people had hearkened unto me,
and Israel had walked in my way !' It is true, God hath not human passions,
but his affections cannot be expressed otherwise in a way intelligible to us ;
the excellency of his nature is above the passions of men, but such expres-
sions of himself manifest to us the sincerity of his goodness, and that, were
he capable of our passions, he would express himself in such a manner as
we do. And we find incarnate goodness bewailing with tears and sighs the
ruin of Jerusalem, Luke xix. 42. By the same reason that when a sinner
returns there is joy in heaven, upon his obstinacy there is sorrow on earth ;
the one is as if a prince should clothe all his court in triumphant scarlet
upon a rebel's repentance, and the other, as if a prince should put himself
and his court in mourning for a rebel's obstinate refusal of a pardon, when
he lies at his mercy. Are not, now, these affectionate invitations and deep
bewailings of their perversity high testimonies of divine goodness ? Do not
the unwearied repetitions of gracious encouragements deserve a higher name
than that of mere goodness ? What can be a stronger evidence of the
sincerity of it than the sound of his saving voice in our enjoyments, the
motion of his Spirit in our hearts, and his grief for the neglect of all ?
These are not testimonies of any want of goodness in his nature to answer
us, or willingness to express it to his creature. Hath he any mind to deceive
us, that thus entreats us ? The majesty of his nature is too great for such
shifts ; or, if it were not, the despicableness of our condition would render
him above the using any. Who would charge that physician with want of
kindness, that freely offers his sovereign medicine, importunes men by the
love they have to their health to take it, and is dissolved into tears and
sorrow when he finds it rejected by their peevish and conceited humour ?
(7.) Divine goodness is eminent in the sacraments he hath affixed to this

342 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

covenant, especially in the Lord's Supper. As he gave himself in his Son,
so he gives his Son in the sacrament ; he doth not only give him as a sacri-
fice upon the cross for the expiation of our crimes, but as a feast upon the
table for the nourishment of our souls. In the one he was given to be
offered, in this he gives him to be partaked of, with all the fruits of his
death ; under the image of the sacramental signs, every believer doth eat
the flesh and drink the blood of the great Mediator of the covenant. The
words of Christ, Mat. xxvi. 26, 28, ' This is my body ' and ' This is my
blood,' are true to the end of the world. This is the most delicious viand
of heaven, the most exquisite dainty food God can feed us with ; the delight
of the Deity, the admiration of angels. A feast iidth God is great, but a feast
on God is greater. Under those signs that body is presented ; that which
was conceived by the Spirit, inhabited by the Godhead, bruised by the Father
to be our food, as well as our propitiation, is presented to us on the table.
That blood which satisfied justice, washed away our guilt on the cross, and
pleads for our persons at the throne of grace ; that blood which silenced the
curse, pacified heaven, and purged earth, is given to us for our refreshment.
This is the bread sent from heaven, the true manna ; the cup is the ' cup
of blessing,' and therefore a cup of goodness, 1 Cor. x. 16. It is true, bread
doth not cease to be bread, nor the wine cease to be wine ; neither of them lose
their substance, but both acquire a sanctification by the relation they have
to that which they represent, and give a nourishment to that faith that
receives them. In those God offers us a remedy for the sting of sin, and
troubles of conscience ; he gives us, not the blood of a mere man, or the
blood of an incarnate angel, but of God blessed for ever, a blood that can
secure us against the wrath of heaven, and the tumults of our consciences, —
a blood that can wash away our sins, and beautify our souls, — a blood that
hath more strength than our filth, and more prevalency than our accuser, —
a blood that secures us against the terrors of death, and purifies us for the
blessedness of heaven. The goodness of God complies with our senses, and
condescends to our weakness ; he instructs us by the eye, as well as by the
ear ; he lets us see, and taste, and feel him, as well as hear him ; he veils
his glory under earthly elements, and informs our understanding in the
mysteries of salvation by signs familiar to our senses ; and, because we can-
not with our bodily eyes behold him in his glory, he presents him to the
eyes of our minds in elements, to affect our understandings in the represen-
tations of his death. The body of Christ crucified is more visible to our
spiritual sense than the visible deity could be visible in his flesh upon earth,
and the power of his body and blood is as well experimented in our souls as
the power of his divinity was seen by the Jews in his miraculous actions in
his body in the world. It is the goodness of God to mind us frequently of
the great things Christ hath purchased ; that as himself would not let them be
out of his mind, to communicate them to us, so he would give us means to
preserve them in our minds, to adore him for them, and request them of
him ; whereby he doth evidence his own solicitousness that we should not
be deprived, by our own forgetfulness, of that grace Christ hath purchased
for us ; it was to remember the Eedeemer, and ' shew his death till he came,'
1 Cor. xi. 25, 26.

[1.] His goodness is seen in the end of it, which is a sealing the covenant
of grace. The common nature and end of sacraments is to seal the cove-
nant they belong to, and the truths of the promises of it.* The legal sacra-
ments of circumcision and the passover sealed the legal promises and the
covenant in the Judaical administration of it ; and the evangelical sacraments
* Amyrald, Irenicum, p. 16, 17.

Maek X. 18.] god's goodness. B'iS

seal the evangelical promises, as a ring confirms the contract of marriage
and a seal the articles of a compact ; by the same reason circumcision is
called a ' seal of the righteousness of faith,' Rom. iv. 11. Other sacraments
may have the same title ; God doth attest that he will remain firm in his
promise, and the receiver attests he will remain firm in his faith. In all
reciprocal covenants there are mutual engagements, and that which serves
for a seal on the part of the one, serves for a seal also on the part of the
other ; God obligeth himself to the performance of the promise, and man
engageth himself to the performance of his duty. The thing confirmed by
this sacrament is the perpetuity of this covenant in the blood of Christ ;
whence it is called ' the New Testament,' or covenant ' in the blood of
Christ,' Luke xsii, 20. In every repetition of it, God, by presenting, con-
firms his resolution to us of sticking to this covenant for the merit of Christ's
blood ; and the receiver, by eating the body and drinking the blood, en-
gageth himself to keep close to the condition of faith, expecting a full salva-
tion and a blessed immortality upon the merit of the same blood alone.
This sacrament could not be called the New Testament or covenant if it had
not some relation to the covenant ; and what it can be but this I do not
understand. The covenant itself was confirmed by the death of Christ,
Heb. ix. 15, and thereby made unchangeable both in the benefits to us and
the condition required of us ; but he seals it to our sense in a sacrament to
give us strong consolation ; or rather the articles of the covenant of redemp-
tion between the Father and the Son, agreed on from eternity, were accom-
plished on Christ's part by his death, on the Father's part by his resurrection ;
Christ performed what he promised in the one, and God acknowledged the
validity of it, and performs what he had promised in the other. The cove-
nant of grace, founded upon this covenant of redemption, is sealed in the
sacrament ; God owns his standing to the terms of it, as sealed by the blood
of the Mediator, by presenting him to us under those signs, and gives us a
right upon faith to the enjoyment of the fruits of it ; as the right of a house
is made over by the delivery of the key, and the right of land translated by
the delivery of a turf ; whereby he gives us assurance of his reality, and a
strong support to our confidence in him. Not that there is any virtue and
power of sealing in the elements themselves, no more than there is in a turf,
to give an infeoftment in a parcel of land ; but as the power of the one is de-
rived from the order of the law, so the confirming power of the sacrament is
derived from the institution of God ; as the oil wherewith kings were anointed
did not of itself confer upon them that royal dignity, but it was a sign of the
investiture into office, ordered by divine institution. We can with no reason
imagine that God intended them as naked signs or pictures, to please our eyes
with the image of them, to represent their own figures to our eyes, but to con-
firm something to our understanding by the efficacy of the Spirit accompanying
them.* They convey to the believing receiver what they represent, as the
great seal of a prince, fixed to the parchment, doth the pardon of the
rebel, as well as its own figure. Christ's death, and the grace of the cove-
nant, is not only signified, but the fruits and merit of that death communi-
cated also. Thus doth divine goodness evidence itself, not only in making
a gracious covenant with us, but fixing seals to it ; not to strengthen his
own obligation, which stood stronger than the foundations of heaven and
earth, upon the credit of his word, but to strengthen our weakness, and
support our security, by something which might appear more formal and
solemn than a bare word. By this, the divine goodness provides against
our spiritual faintings, and shews us, by real signs, as well as verbal declara-
* Daille, Melang. part i. p. 153.

344 cuaknock's works. [Mark X. 18.

tions, that the covenant sealed by the blood of Christ is unalterable ; and
thereby would fortify and mount our hopes to degrees in some measure
suitable to the kindness of the covenant and the dignity of the Redeemer's
blood. And it is yet a further degree of his goodness, that he hath appointed
us so often to celebrate it, whereby he shews how careful he is to keep up our
tottering faith, and preserve us constant in our obedience ; obliging himself
to the performance of his promise, and obliging us to the payment of our duty.
[2.] His goodness is seen in the sacrament, in giving us in it an union
and communion with Christ. There is not only a commemoration of Christ
dying, but a communication of Christ living. The apostle strongly asserts
it by way of inteiTogation : 1 Cor. x. 16, ' The cup of blessing which we
bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ ? The bread which we
break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ ?' In the cup there is
a communication of the blood of Christ, a conveyance of a right to the merits
of his death, and the blessedness of his life. "We are not less by this made
one body with Christ, than we are by baptism, 1 Cor. xii. 13 ; and put on
Christ living in this, as well as in baptism, Gal. iii. 27 ; that as his taking
our infirm flesh was a real incarnation, so the giving us his flesh to eat is a
mystical incarnation in believers, whereby they become one body with him
as crucified, and one body with him as risen ; for if Christ himself be
received by faith in the word. Col. ii. 6, he is no less received by faith in
the sacrament. "VMien the Holy Ghost is said to be received, the graces or
gifts of the Holy Ghost are received ; so when Christ is received, the fruits of
his death are really partaked of. The Israelites that ate the sacrifices did
* partake of the altar,' 1 Cor. x. 18, /. e. had a communion with the God of
Israel, to whom they had been sacrificed ; and those that ' ate of the sacri-
fices' oflered to idols, had a ' fellowship with devils,' to whom those sacrifices
were ofi'ered, ver. 20. Those that partake of the sacraments in a due man-
ner, have a communion with that God to whom it was sacrificed, and a
communion with that body which was sacrificed to God ; not that the sub-
stance of that body and blood is wrapped up in the elements, or that the
bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but as
they represent him, and by virtue of the institution are in estimation him-
self, his own body and blood, by the same reason as he is called ' Christ our
passover,' 1 Cor. v. 7, he may be called Christ our supper ; for as they are
80 reckoned to an unworthy receiver, as if they were the real body and blood
of Christ, because by his not discerning the Lord's body in it, or making
light of it as common bread, he is judged ' guilty of the body and blood of
Christ,' guilty of treating him in as base a manner as the Jews did when
they crowned him with thorns, 1 Cor. xi. 27, 29 ; by the same reason they
must be reckoned to a worthy receiver as the very body and blood of Christ ;
so that as the unworthy receiver ' eats and drinks damnation,' the worthy
receiver eats and drinks salvation. It would be an empty mystery, and
unworthy of an institution by divine goodness, if there were not some com-
munion with Christ in it. There would be some kind of deceit in the pre-
cept, ' Take, eat and drink, this is my body and blood,' if there were not a
conveyance of spiritual vital influences to our souls ; for the natural end of
eating and drinking is the nourishment and increase of the body, and pre-
servation of life, by that which we eat and drink. The infinite wise, gra-
cious, and true God, would never give us empty figures without accomplishing
that which is signified by them, and suitable to them. How great is this
goodness of God ! He would have his Son in us, one with us, straitly joined
to us, as if we were his proper flesh and blood. In the incarnation, divine
goodness united him to our nature ; in the sacrament it doth in a sort unite

Maek X. 18.j god's goodness. 345

him with his purchased privileges to our persons ; we have not a communion
with a part or a member of his body, or a di'op of his blood, but with his
whole body and blood, represented in every part of the elements. The
angels in the heaven enjoy not so great a privilege ; they have the honour
to be under him as their head, but not that of having him for their food ;
they behold him, but they do not taste him ; and certainly that goodness
that hath condescended so much to our weakness, would impart it to us in
a very glorious manner were we capable of it ; but because a man cannot
behold the light of the sun in its full splendour by reason of the infirmities
of his eyes, he must behold it by the help of a glass, and such a communi-
cation through a coloured and opaque glass, is as real from the sun itself,
though not so glorious, but more shrouded and obscure. It is the same
light that shines through that medium, as spreads itself gloriously in the
open air, though the one be masked and the other open-faced.

To conclude this ; by the way we may take notice of the neglect of this
ordinance. If it be a token of divine goodness to appoint it, it is no sign
of our estimation of divine goodness to neglect it. He that values the kind-
ness of his friend wiU accept of his invitation, if there be not some strong
impediments in the way, or so much familiarity with him that his refusal
upon a light occasion would not be unkindly taken. But though God put
on the disposition of a friend to us, yet he loseth not the authority of a
sovereign ; and the humble familiarity he invites us to, doth not diminish
the condition and duty of a subject. A sovereign prince would not take it
well, if a favourite should refuse the offered honour of his table. The viands
of God are not to be slighted. Can we live better upon our poor pittance
than upon his dainties ? Did not divine goodness condescend in it to the
weakness of our faith, and shall we conceit our faith stronger than God
thinks it ? If he thought fit by those seals to make a deed of gift to us,
shall we be so unmannerly to him, and such enemies to the security he offers
us over and above his word, as not to accept it '? Are we unwilling to have
our souls inflamed with love, our hearts filled with comfort, and armed
against the attempts of om* enemies ? It is true there is a guilt of the body
and blood of Christ contracted by a slightness in the manner of attending ;
is it not also contracted by a refusal and neglect ? What is the language of
it ? If it speaks not the death of Christ in vain, it speaks the institution of
this ordinance as the remembrance of his death to be a vanity, and no mark
of divine goodness. Let us therefore put such a value upon divine good-
ness in this afiair, as to be willing to receive the conveyances of his love,
and fresh engagements of our duty ; the one is due from us to the kindness
of our friend, and the other belongs to our duty as his subjects.

(8.) By this redemption God restores us to a more excellent condition than
Adam had in innocence. Christ was sent by divine goodness, not only to
restore the life Adam's sin had stripped us of, but to give it more abundantly
than Adam's standing could have conveyed it to us : John x. 10, ' I am come
that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'
More abundantly for strength, more abundantly for duration, a life abound-
ing with greater felicity and glorj' ; the substance of those better promises
of the new covenant than what attended the old. There are fuller streams
of grace by Christ than flowed to Adam, or could flow from Adam. As
Christ never restored any to health and strength while he was in the world,
but he gave them a greater measure of both than they had before, so there
is the same kindness, no question, manifested in our spiritual condition.
Adam's life might have preserved us, but Adam's death could not have
rescued either himself or his posterity ; but in our redemption we have a

346 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

redeemer, who hath died to expiate our sins, and so crowned with life to
save, Rom. v. 10, and for ever preserve our persons. ' Because I live, ye
shall live also,' John xiv. 19, so that by redeeming goodness the life of a
believer is as perpetual as the life of the redeemer Christ. Adam, though
innocent, was under the danger of perishing ; a believer, though culpable, is
above the fears of mutability. Adam had a holiness in his nature, but cap-
able of being lost; by Christ believers have a holiness bestowed, not capable
of being rifled, but which will remain till it be at last fully perfected. Though
they have a power to change in their nature, yet they are above an actual
final change, by the indulgence of divine grace. Adam stood by himself ;
believers stand in a root impossible to be shaken or corrupted. By this
means ' the promise is sure to all the seed,' Rom. iv. 16. Christ is a
stronger person than Adam, who can never break covenant with God, and
the truth of God will never break covenant with him. We are united to a
more excellent head than Adam. Instead of a root merely human, we have
a root divine, as well as human. In him, we had the righteousness of a
creature merely human ; in this, we have a righteousness divine, the right-
eousness of God-man ; the stock is no longer in our hands, but in the hands
of one that cannot embezzle it, or forfeit it. Divine goodness hath deposited
it strongly for our security. The stamp we receive by the divine goodness
from the second Adam is more noble than that we should have received from
the first, had he remained in his created state. Adam was formed of the
dust of the earth, and the new man is formed by the incorruptible seed of
the word. And at the resurrection the body of man shall be endued with
better qualities than Adam had at creation ; they shall be like that glorious
body, which is in heaven in union with the person of the Son of God, Phil,
iii. 21. Adam at the best had but an earthly body, but the Lord from
heaven hath a heavenly body, the image of which shall be borne by the
redeemed ones, as they have borne the image of the earthly, 1 Cor. xv. 47-49.
Adam had the society of beasts ; redeemed ones expect by divine goodness in
redemption a commerce with angels ; as they are reconciled to them by his
death, they shall certainly come to converse with them at the consummation
of their happiness. As they are made of one family, so they will have a
peculiar intimacy. Adam had a paradise, and redeemed ones a heaven pro-
vided for them, a happier place with a richer furniture. It is much to give
so complete a paradise to innocent Adam, but more to give heaven to an
ungrateful Adam, and his rebellious posterity. It had been abundant good-
ness to have restored us to the same condition in that paradise, from whence
we were ejected ; but a super-abundant goodness to bestow upon us a better
habitation in heaven, which we could never have expected. How great is
that goodness, when by sin we were fallen to be worse than nothing, that he
should raise us to be more than what we were ! That restored us, not to
the first step of our creation, but to many degrees of elevation beyond it ;
not only restores us, but prefers us ; not only striking ofi" our chains, to set
us free, but clothing us with a robe of righteousness, to render us honour-
able; not only quenching our hell, but preparing a heaven; not regarnish-
ing an earthly, but providing a richer palace. His goodness was so great
that, after it had rescued us, it would not content itself with the old furni-
ture, but makes all new for us in another world : a new wine to drink ; a
new heaven to dwell in ; a more magnificent structure for our habitation.
Thus bath goodness prepared for us a straiter union, a stronger life, a purer
righteousness, an unshaken standing, and a fuller glory, all more excellent
than was within the compass of innocent Adam's possession.

(9.) This goodness in redemption extends itself to the lower creation. It

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 347

takes in not only man, but the whole creation, except the fallen angels, and
gives a participation of it to insensible creatures ; upon the account of this
redemption the sun and all kind of creatures were preserved, which other-
wise had sunk into destruction upon the sin of man, and ceased from their
being, as man had utterly ceased from his happiness : Col. i. 17, ' By him
all things consist.' The fall of man brought not only a misery upon himself,
but a vanity upon the creature ; the earth groaned under a curse for his
sake. They were all created for the glory of God, and the support of man
in the performance of his duty, who was obliged to use them for the honour
of him that created them both. Had man been true to his obligations, and
used the creatures for that end, to which they were dedicated by the Creator,
as God would have then rejoiced in his works, so his works would have rejoiced
in the honour of answering so excellent an end. But when man lost his
integrity, the creatures lost their perfection ; the honour of them was stained
when they were debased to serve the lusts of a traitor, instead of supporting
the duty of a subject, and employed in the defence of the vices of men
against the precepts and authority of their common sovereign. This was a
vilifying the creature, as it would be a vilifying the sword of a prince, which
is for the maintenance of justice, to be used for the murder of an innocent;
and a dishonouring a royal mansion, to make it a storehouse for a dunghill.
Had those things the benefit of sense, they would groan under this disgrace, and
rise up in indignation against them that offered them this afiront, and turned
them from their proper end. When sin entered, the heavens, that were made
to shine upon man, and the earth, that was made to bear and nourish an in-
nocent creature, were now subjected to serve a rebellious creature. And as
a man turned against God, so he made those instruments against God, to
serve his enmity, luxury, sensuality. Hence the creatures are said to groan :
Eom. viii. 21, ' The whole creation groans and travails in pain together until
now.' They would really groan, had they understanding to be sensible of
the outrage done them.

' The whole creation.' It is the pang of universal nature, the agony of
the whole creation, to be alienated from the original use for which they were
intended, and be disjointed from their end, to serve the disloyalty of a rebel.
The drunkard's cup, the glutton's table, the adulterer's bed, and the proud
man's purple, would groan against the abuser of them. But when all the
fruits of redemption shall be completed, the goodness of God shall pour itself
upon the creatures, ' deliver them from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God ' ; they shall be reduced to their true
end, and returned in their original harmony. As the creation doth passion-
ately groan under its vanity, so it doth ' earnestly expect and wait for its
deliverance at the time of the manifestation of the sons of God,' ver. 19.
The manifestation of the sons of God is the attainment of the liberty of the
creature. They shall be freed from the vanity under which they are enslaved.
As it entered by sin, it shall vanish upon the total removal of sin. What
use they were designed for in paradise, they will have afterwards, except that
of the nourishment of men, who shall be as angels, neither eating nor drink-
ing. The glory of God shall be seen and contemplated in them. It can
hardly be thought that God made the world to be, a little moment after he
had reared it, sullied by the sin of man, and turned from its original end,
without thoughts of a restoration of it to its true end, as well as man to his
lost happiness. The world was made for man. Man hath not yet enjoyed
the creature in the first intention of them ; sin made an interruption in that
fruition. As redemption restores man to his true end, so it restores the
creatures to their true use. The restoration of the world to its beauty and

348 charnock's works. [LIaek X. 18.

order was the design of the divine goodness in the coming of Christ, as it is
intimated in Isa. xi. 6-9. As he ' came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil
it,' so he came not to destroy the creatures, but to repair them ; to restore
to God the honour and pleasure of the creation, and restore to the creatures
their felicity, in restoring their order. The fall corrupted it, and the full
redemption of men restores it. The last time is called not a time of des-
truction, but a ' time of restitutiou, and that ' of all things,' Acts iii. 21 ; of
universal nature, the main part of the creation at least. All those things
which were the effects of sin will be abolished ; the removal of the cause
beats down the effect. The disorder and unruliness of the creature, arising
from the venom of man's transgression, all the fierceness of one creature
against another, shall vanish. The world shall be nothing but an universal
smile. Nature shall put on triumphant vestments. There shall be no
affrighting thunders, choking mists, venomous vapours, or poisonous plants ;
it would not else be a restitution of all things. They are now subject to be
wasted by judgments for the sin of their possessor, but the perfection of
man's redemption shall free them from every misery. They have an ad-
vancement at the present, for they are under a more glorious head, as being
the possession of Christ, the heavenly Adam, much superior to the first, as
it is the glory of a person to be a servant to a prince, rather than a peasant.
And afterwai'ds they shall be elevated to a better state, sharing in man's
happiness, as well as they did in his misery, as servants are interested in
the good fortune of their master, and bettered by his advance in his prince's
favour. As man in his fij-st creation was mutable and liable to sin, so the
creatures were liable to vanity ; but as man by grace shall be freed fi'om the
mutability, so shall the creatures be freed from the fears of an invasion by
the vanity that sullied them before. The condition of the servants shall be
suited to that of their lord, for whom they were designed. Hence all crea-
tm-es are called upon to rejoice upon the perfection of salvation, and the
appearance of Christ's royal authority in the world, Ps. xcvi. 11, 12,
xcviii. 7, 8. If they were to be destroyed, there would be no ground to
invite them to triumph. Thus doth divine goodness spread its kind arms
over the whole creation.

3. The third thing is the goodness of God in his government. That
goodness that despised not their creation, doth not despise their conduct.
The same goodness that was the head that framed them, is the helm that
guides them ; his goodness hovers over the whole frame, either to prevent
any wild disorders unsuitable to his creating end, or to conduct them to
those ends which might illustrate his wisdom and goodness to his creatures.
His goodness doth no less incline him to provide for them, than to frame
them. It is the natural inclination of man to love what is purely the birth
of his' own strength or skill. He is fond of preserving his own inventions,
as well as laborious in inventing them. It is the glory of a man to preserve
them, as well as to produce them. God loves everything which he hath
made, which love could not be without a continued diffusiveness to them,
suitable to the end for which he made them. It would be a vain goodness, if
it did not interest itself in managing the world, as well as erecting it. With-
out his government, everything in the world would justle against one another.
The beauty of it would be more defaced, it would be an unruly mass, a
confused chaos rather than a K&'o/zog, a comely world. If divine goodness
respected it when it was as nothing, it would much more respect it when it
was something by the sole virtue of his power and good will to it, without
any motive from anything else than himself, because there was nothing else
but himself. But since he sees his own stamp in things without himself in

Mabk X. 18.] god's goodness. 349

the creature, which is a kind of motive or moving object to divine goodness
to preserve it, vrhen there was nothing without himself that could be any
motive to him to create it ; as when God hath created a creature, and it
falls into misery, that misery of the creature, though it doth not necessitate
his mercy, yet meeting with such an affection as mercy in his nature, is a
moving object to excite it ; as the repentance of Xineveh drew forth the
exercise of his pity and preserving goodness. Certainly since God is good,
he is bountiful ; and if bountiful, he is provident. He would seem to envy
and malign his creatures, if he did not provide for them, while he intends to
use them. But infinite goodness cannot be affected with envy ; for all envy
implies a want of that good in ourselves, which we regard with so evil aia
eye in another. But God being infinitely blessed, hath not the want of any
good, that can be a rise to such an uncomely disposition. The Jews thought
that divine goodness extended only to them in an immediate and particular
care, and left all other nations and things to the guidance of angels. But
the psalmist, Ps. cvii., a psalm calculated for the celebration of this perfec-
tion, in the continued course of his providence throughout all ages of the
world, ascribes to divine goodness immediately all the advantages men meet
with. He helps them in their actions, presides over their motions, inspects
their several conditions, labours day and night in a perpetual care of them.
The whole life of the world is Hnked together by divine goodness. Every-
thing is ordered by him in the place where he hath set it, without which
the world would be stripped of that excellency it hath by creation.

(1.) First, This goodness is evident in the care he hath of all creatures.
There is a peculiar goodness to his people ; but this takes not away his
general goodness to the world. Though a master of a family hath a choicer
affection to those that have an afiinity to him in nature, and stand in a nearer
relation, as his wife, children, servants ; yet he hath a regard to his cattle,
and other creatures he nourisheth in his house. All things are not only
before his eyes, but in his bosom ; he is the nurse of all creatures, supply-
ing their wftnts, and sustaining them from that nothing they tend to. Ps.
civ. 24, * The earth is full of his riches,' not a creek or cranny but par-
takes of it. Abundant goodness daily hovers over it, as well as hatched
it. The whole world swims in the rich bounty of the Creator, as the fish
do in the largeness of the sea, and birds in the spaciousness of the air.*
The goodness of God is the river that waters the whole earth. As a lifeless
picture casts its eye upon every one in the room, so doth a living God upon
everything in the world. And as the sun illuminates all things which are
capable of partaking of its light, and diffuseth its beams to all things which
are capable of receiving them, so doth God spread his wings over the whole
creation, and neglects nothing wherein he sees a mark of his first creating
goodness.

His goodness is seen,

[1.] In preserving all things. Ps. xxxvi, 6, ' 0 Lord, thou preservest
man and beast.' Not only man, but beasts, and beasts as well as men ;
man, as the most excellent creature, and beasts as being serviceable to man,
and instruments of his worldly happiness. He continues the species of all
things, concurs with them in their distinct ofiices, and quickens the womb
of nature. He visits man every day, and makes him feel the effects of his
providence, in ' giving him fruitful seasons, and filling his heart with food
and gladness,' Acts xiv. 17, as witnesses of his Hberality and kindness to
man. ' The earth is visited and watered by the river of God. He settles
the furrows of the earth, and makes it soft with showers,' that the com may
• Gulielmus Parasien, p. 184.

850 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

be nourished in its womb, and spring up to maturity. * He crowns the year
with his goodness, and his paths drop fatness. The little hills rejoice on
every side ; the pastures are clothed with flocks, and the valleys are covered
over with corn,' as the psalmist elegantly, Ps. Ixv. 9, 10, and Ps. cvii. 35, 36.
He waters the ground by his showers, and preserves the little seed from the
rapine of animals. He draws not out * the evil arrows of famine,' as the
expression is, Ezek. v. 16. Every day shines with new beams of his divine
goodness. The vastness of this city, and the multitudes of Hving souls in
it, is an astonishing argument. What streams of nourishing necessaries are
daily conveyed to it ! Every mouth hath bread to sustain it, and among all the
number of poor in the bowels and skirts of it, how rare is it to hear of any
starved to death for want of it ! Every day he ' spreads a table' for us, and
that with varieties, and ' fills our cups,' Ps. xxiii. 5. He shortens not his
hand, nor withdraws his bounty ; the increase of one year by his blessing,
restores what was spent by the former. He is the ' strength of our life,'
Ps. xxvii. 1, continuing the vigour of our limbs, and the health of our bodies ;
secures us from ' terrors by night, and the arrows of diseases that fly by
day,' Ps. xci. 5 ; * sets a hedge' about our estates. Job. i. 10, and defends
them against the attempts of violence ; preserves our houses from flames
that miffht consume them, and om- persons from the dangers that lie in wait
for them ; watcheth over us ' in our goings out, and om- comings in,' Ps.
cxxi. 8, and waylaj^s a thousand dangers we know not of ; and employs
the most glorious creatures in heaven, in the service of mean men upon
earth, Ps. xci. 11, not by a faint order, but a pressing charge over them,
to ' keep them in all his ways.' Those that are his immediate servants be-
fore his throne, he sends to minister to them that were once his rebels.
By an angel he conducted the affairs of Abraham, Gen. xxiv. 7 ; and by an
angel secured the life of Ishmael, Gen. xxi. 17. Glorious angels for mean
man, holy angels for impure man, powerful angels for weak man. How, in
the midst of great dangers, doth his sudden light dissipate our great dark-
ness, and create a deliverance out of nothing ! How often is he found a
present help in time of trouble ! When all other assistance seems to stand
at a distance, he flies to us beyond our expectations, and raises us up on
the sudden from the pit of our dejectedness, as well as that of our danger,
exceeding our wishes, and shooting beyond our desires as well as our deserts.
How often, in a time of confusion, doth he preserve an indefensible place
from the attacks of enemies, Hke a spark in the midst of a tempestuous sea !
The rage falls upon other places round about them, and by a secret efficacy
of divine goodness is not able to touch them. He hath peculiar i^reservations
for his Israel in Egypt, and his Lots in Sodom, his Daniels in the lions'
dens, and his children in a fiery furnace. He hath a tenderness for all, but
a peculiar affection to those that are in covenant with him.

[2.] The goodness of God is seen in taking care of the animals and inani-
mate things. Divine goodness embraceth in its arms the lowest worm as
well as the loftiest cherubim ; he provides food for the crying raven, Ps.
cxlvii. 9, and a prey for the appetite of the hungry lion, Ps. civ. 21 ; 'He
opens his hand, and fills with good those innumerable creeping things, both
small and great beasts ; they are all waiters upon him, and all are satisfied
by their bountiful master,' Ps. civ. 25-28. They are better provided for
by the hand of heaven than the best favourite is by an earthly prince ; for
' they are filled with good.' He hath made channels in the wildest deserts
for the watering of beasts, and trees for the nests and habitations of birds,
ver. 10, 12, 17. As a lawgiver to the Jews, he took care that the poor
beast should not be abused by the cruelty of man ; he provided for the ease

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 351

of the labouring beast in that command of the Sabbath wherein he provided
for his own service ; the cattle was to do no work on it, Exod. xx. 10. He
ordered that the mouth of the ox should not be muzzled while it trod out
the corn, Deut. xxv. 4, it being the manner of those countries to separate
the corn from the stalk by that means, as we do in this by thrashing ;
regarding it as a part of cruelty to deprive the poor beast of tasting, and
satisfying itself with that which he was so officious by his labour to prepare
for the use of man. And when any met with a nest of young birds, though
they might take the young to their use, they were forbidden to seize upon
the dam, that she might not lose the objects of her aflfection and her own
liberty in one day, Deut. xxii. 6.

And see how God enforceth this precept with a threatening of a shortness
of life, if they transgressed it ! ver. 7, ' Thou shalt let the dam go, that it
may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.' He would
revenge the cruelty to dumb creatures with the shortness of the oppressor's
life ; nor would he have cruelty used to creatures that were separated for his
worship ; he therefore provides that a cow or an ewe and their young ones
should not be killed for sacrifice in one day. Lev. xxii. 28 : all which pre-
cepts, say the Jews, are to teach men mercifulness to their beasts ; so much
doth divine goodness bow down itself to take notice of those mean creatures
which men have so little regard to, but for their own advantage ; yea, he is
so good, that he would have worship declined for a time in favour of a dis-
tressed beast ; the helping a sheep, or an ox, or an ass out of a pit was
indulged them even on the Sabbath day, a day God had peculiarly sanctified
and ordered for his service. Mat. xii. 11, Luke xiv. 5. Li this case he
seems to remit for a time the rights of the Deity for the rescue of a mere
animal. His goodness extends not only to those kind of creatures that have
life, but to the insensible ones ; he clothes the grass, and arrays the lilies
of the field with a greater glory than Solomon had upon his throne. Mat.
vi. 28, 29 ; and such care he had of those trees which bore fruit for the
maintenance of man or beast, that he forbids any injury to be ofi"ered to
them, and bars the rapine and violence which by soldiers used to be prac-
tised, Deut. XX. 19, though it were to promote the conquest of their enemy.
How much goodness is it that he should think of so small a thing as man !
How much more that he should concern himself in things that seem so
petty as beasts and trees ! Persons seated in a sovereign throne think it
a debasing of their dignity to regard little things ; but God, who is infinitely
greater in majesty above the mightiest potentate, and the highest angel,
yet is so infinitely good as to employ his divine thoughts about the meanest
things. He who possesses the praises of angels, leaves not ofi" the care of
the meanest creatures ; and that majesty that dwells in a pure heaven, and
an unconceivable light, stoops to provide for the ease of those creatures that
lie and lodge in the dirt and dung of the earth. How should we be careful
not to use those unmercifully which God takes such care of in his law, and
not to distrust that goodness that opens his hand so liberally to creatures of
another rank !

1 3. J The goodness of God is seen in taking care of the meanest rational
creatures, as servants and criminals. He provided for the liberty of slaves,
and would not have their chains continue longer than the seventh year,
unless they would voluntarily continue under the power of their masters ;
and that upon pain of his displeasure, and the withdrawing his blessing,
Deut. XV. 18 ; and though by the laws of many nations masters had an
absolute power of life and death over their servants, yet God provided that
no member should be lamed, not an eye, no, nor a tooth struck out, but the

852 chaenock's works. [Mark X. 18.

master was to pay for his folly and fury the price of the liberty of his
servants, Exod. xxi. 26, 27. He would not suffer the abused servant to be
any longer under the power of that man, that had not humanity to use him
as one of the same kindred and blood with himself. And though those
servants might be never so wicked, yet when unjustly afflicted, God would
interest himself as their guardian in their protection and delivery. And
when a poor slave had been provoked by the severity of his master's fury to
turn fugitive from him, he was by divine order not to be delivered up again
to his master's fury, but dwell in that city and with that person to whom he
had fled for refuge, Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. And when public justice was to be
administered upon the lesser sort of criminals, the goodness of God ordered
the number of blows not to exceed forty, and left not the fury of man to
measure out the punishment to excess, Deut. xxv. 3, And in any just
quarrel against a provoking and injuring enemy, he ordered them not to
ravage with the sword till they had summoned a rendition of the place,
Deut. XX. 10. And as great a care he took of the poor, that they should
have the gleanings both of the vineyard and field. Lev. xix. 10, xxiii. 22,
and not be forced to pay usury for the money lent them, Exod. xxii. 25.

[4,1 His goodness is seen in taking care of the wickedest persons. ' The
earth is full of his goodness,' Ps. xxxiii. 5. The wicked as well as the good
enjoy it; they that dare lift up their hands against heaven in the posture of
rebels, as well as those that lift up their eyes in the condition of suppliants.
To do good to a criminal far surmounts that goodness that flows down upon
an innocent object. Now God is not only good to those that have some
decrees of goodness, but to those that have the greatest degrees of wicked-
ness to men that turn his liberality into affronts of him, and have scarce an
appetite to anything but the violation of his authority and goodness. Though
upon the fall of Adam we have lost the pleasant habitation of paradise, and
the creatures made for our use are fallen from their original excellency and
sweetness, yet he hath not left the world utterly'incommodious for us, but yet
stores it with things not only for the preservation, but delight of those that
make their whole lives invectives against this good God. Manna fell from
heaven for the rebellious as well as for the obedient Israelites. Cain as well
as Abel, and Esau as well as Jacob, had the influence of his sun, and the
benefits of his showers. The world is yet a kind of paradise to the veriest
beasts among mankind; the earth affords its riches, the heavens its showers,
and the sun its light to those that injure and blaspheme him : Mat. v. 45,
' He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on
the just and on the unjust.' The wickedest breathe in his air, walk upon his
earth and drink of his water as well as the best. The sun looks with as
pleasant and bright an eye upon a rebellious Absalom as a righteous David ;
the earth yields its plants and medicines to one as well as to the other ; it is
seldom that he deprives any of the faculties of their souls, or any members
of their bodies. God distributes his blessings where he might shoot his
thunders, and darts his light on those who deserve an eternal darkness, and
presents the good things of the earth to those that merit the miseries of
hell; for * the earth and the fulness thereof is the Lord's, Ps. xxiv. 1 ; every-
thinw in it is his in propriety, ours in trust ; it is his corn, his wine, Hosea
ii. 8°; he never divested himself of the propriety, though he grants us the
use • and by those good things he supports multitudes of wicked men, not
one or two, but the whole shoal of them in the world ; for he is ' the
Saviour of all men,' 1 Tim. iv. 10, i. e. is the preserver of all men. And
as he created them, when he foresaw they would be wicked, so he pro-
vides for them when he beholds them in their ungodliness. The ingrati-

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 353

tude of man stops not the current of his bounty, nor tires his liberal hand ;
howsoever unprofitable and injurious men are to him, he is liberal to them ;
and his goodness is the more admirable by how much the more the unthank-
fulness of men is provoking ; he sometimes affords to the worst a greater
portion of these earthly goods ; they often swim in wealth when others pine
away their lives in poverty. And the silkworm yields its bowels to make
purple for tyrants, while the oppressed scarce have from the sheep wool
enough to cover their nakedness ; and though he furnished men with those
good things upon no other account than what princes do when they nourish
criminals in a prison till the time of their execution, it is a mark of his
goodness. Is it not the kindness of a prince to treat his rebels deliciously ?
to give them the liberty of the prison, and the enjoyment of the delights
of the place, rather than to load their legs with fetters, and lodge them in
a dark and loathsome dungeon, till he orders them for their crime to be con-
ducted to the scaffold or gibbet ? Since God is thus kind to the vilest men,
whose meanness by reason of sin is beyond that of any other creature, as to
shoot such rays of goodness upon them, how unexpressible would be the
expressions of his goodness if the divine image were as pure and bright upon
them, as it was upon innocent Adam !

(2.) His goodness is evident in the preservation of human society. It
belongs to his power that he is able to do it, but to his goodness that he is
willing to do it.

[1.] This goodness appears, in prescribing rules for it. The moral law,
Exod. XX. 1, 2, consists but often precepts, and there are more of them ordered
for the support of human society than for the adoration and honour of him-
self : four for the rights of God, and six for the rights of man, and his security
in his authority, relations, life, goods, and reputation ; superiors not to be
dishonoured, life not to be invaded, chastity not to be stained, goods not to
be filched, good name not to be cracked by false witnesses, nor anything
belonging to our neighbour to be coveted. And in the whole Scripture,
not only that which was calculated for the Jews, but compiled for the whole
world, he hath fixed rules for the ordering all relations ; magistrates and
subjects, parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants,
rich and poor, find their distinct qualifications and duties. There would be
a paradisiacal state, if men had a goodness to observe what God hath had
a goodness to order, for the strengthening the sinews of human society.
The world would not groan under oppressing tyrants, nor princes tremble
under discontented subjects, or mighty rebels ; children would not be pro-
voked to anger by the unreasonableness of their parents, nor parents sink
under grief by the rebellion of their children ; masters would not tyrannize
over the meanest of their servants, nor servants invade the authority of
their masters.

[2.] The goodness of God in the preserving human society, is seen in
settmg a magistracy to preserve it. Magistracy is from God in its original,
the charter was drawn up in paradise. Civil subordination must have been,
had man remained in innocence ; but the charter was more explicitly
renewed and enlarged at the restoration of the world after the deluge, and
given out to man under the broad seal of heaven : Gen. ix. 6, ' Whoso sheds
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' The command of shedding
the blood of a murderer was a part of his goodness, to secure the lives
of those that bore his image. Magistrates are ' the shields of the earth,'
but ' they belong to God,' Ps. xlvii. 9. They are fruits of his goodness in
their original and authority. Were there no magistracy, there would be no
government, no security to any man under his own vine and fig-tree ; the

VOL. II. z

354 charnock's works. [Maek X. 18.

world would be a den of wild beasts preying upon one another, every one
would do what seems good in his eyes. The loss of government is a judg-
ment God brings upon a nation, when men become as the fishes of the sea,
to devour one another, because they have no ruler over them, Hab. i. 14.
Private dissensions will break out into public disorders and combustions.

[3.] The goodness of God, in the preservation of human society, is seen
in the restraints of the passions of men. He sets bounds to the passions
of men, as well as to the rollings of the sea, Ps. Ixv. 7, ' He stilleth the
noise of the waves, and the tumults of the people.' Though God hath
erected a magistracy to stop the breaking out of those floods of licentious-
ness which swell in the hearts of men, yet if God should not hold stiff reins
on the necks of those tumultuous and foaming passions, the world would be
a place of unruly confusion, and hell triumph upon earth. A crazy state
would be quickly broke in pieces by boisterous nature. The tumults of a
people could no more be quelled by the force of man, than the rage of the
sea by a puff of breath ; without divine goodness, neither the wisdom nor
watchfulness of the magistrates, nor the industry of officers, could 'preserve
a state. The laws of men would be too slight to curb the lusts of men, if
the goodness of God did not restrain them by a secret hand, and interweave
their temporal security with observance of those laws. The sons of Belial
did murmur when Saul was chosen king ; and that they did no more was
the goodness of God, for the preservation of human society. If God did
not restrain the impetuousness of men's lusts, they would be the entire ruin
of human society ; their lusts would render them as bad as beasts, and
change the world into a savage wilderness.

[4. J The goodness of God is seen, in the preservation of human society,
in giving various inclinations to men, for public advantage. If all men had
an inclination to one science or art, they would all stand idle spectators of
one another ; but God hath bestowed various dispositions and gifts upon
men, for the promoting the common good, that they may not only be useful
to themselves, but to society. He will have none idle, none unuseful,
but every one acting in a due place, according to their measures, for the
good of others.

[5.] The goodness of God is seen in the witness he bears against those
sins that disturb human society. In those cases he is pleased to interest
himself in a more signal manner, to cool those that make it their business
to overturn the order he hath established for the good of the earth. He
doth not so often in this world punish those faults committed immediately
against his own honour, as those that put the world into a hurry and con-
fusion ; as a good governor is more merciful to crimes against himself than
those against his community. It is observed that the most turbulent sedi-
tious persons in a state come to most violent ends ; as Korah, Adonijah,
Zimri. Ahithophel draws Absalom's sword against David and Israel, and
the next is, he twists a halter for himself. Absalom heads a party against
his father, and God, by a goodness to Israel, hangs him up, and prevents
not its safety by David's indulgence, and a future rebellion, had life been
spared by the fondness of his father. His providence is more evident in
discovering disturbers, and the causes that move them ; in defeating their
enterprises, and digging the contrivers out of their caverns and lurking-
holes. In such cases God doth so act, and use such methods, that he
silenceth any creature from challenging any partnership with him in the
discovery. He doth more severely in this world correct those actions that
unlink the mutual assistance between man and man, and the charitable and
kind correspondence he would have kept up. The sins for which ' the

Mabk X. 18.J god's goodxess. 355

wrath of God comes upon the childi-en of disobedience ' in this world, are
of this sort, Col. iii. 5, 6. And when princes will be oppressing the people,
God will be ' pouring contempt on the princes, and set the poor on high
from affliction,' Ps. cvii. 40, 41. An evidence of God's care and kindness
in the preserving human society, is those strange discoveries of murders,
though never so clandestine and subtilely committed, more than of any other
crime among men. Divine care never appears more than in bringing those
hidden and injurious works of darkness to light, and a due punishment.

[6.] His goodness is seen in ordering mutual offices to one another against
the current of men's passions. Upon this account, he ordered in his laws
for the government of the Israelites, that a man should reduce the wander-
ing beast of his enemy to the hand of his rightful proprietor, though he
were a provoking enemy ; and also help the poor beast, that belonged to
one that hated him, when he saw him sink under his burden, Esod.
xxiii. 4, 5. When mutual assistance was necessary, he would not have men
considered as enemies, or considered as wicked, but as of the same blood
with ourselves, that we might be serviceable to one another for the preserva-
tion of life and goods.

[7. J His goodness is seen in remitting something of his own right, for
the preserving a due dependence and subjection. He declines the right he
had to the vows of a minor, or one under the power of another, waiving
what he might challenge by the voluntary obligation of his creature, to keep
up the due order between parents and children, husbands and wives, supe-
riors and inferiors. Those that were under the power of another, as a child
under his parents, or a wife under her husband, if they had vowed a vow
unto the Lord which concerned his honour and worship, it was void without
the approbation of that person under whose charge they were. Num. xxx. 3, 4,
&c. Though God was the Lord of every man's goods, and men but his
stewards, and though he might have taken to himself what another had
offered by a vow, since whatsoever could be offered was God's own, though
it was not the party's own who offered it, yet God would not have himself
adored by his creature to the prejudice of the necessary ties of human
society. He lays aside what he might challenge by his sovereign dominion,
that there might not be any breach of that regular order which was neces-
sary for the preservation of the world. If divine goodness did not thus
order things, he would not do the part of a rector of the world. The beauty
of the world would be much defaced, it would be a confused mass of men
and women, or rather beasts and bedlams. Order renders every city, every
nation, yea, the whole earth beautiful. This is an effect of divine goodness.

(3.) His goodness is evident in encouraging anything of moral goodness
in the world. Though moral goodness cannot claim an eternal reward, yet
it hath been many times rewarded with a temporal happiness. He hath
often signally rewarded acts of honesty, justice, and fidelity, and punished
the contrary by his judgments, to deter man from such an unworthy practice,
and encourage others to what was comely and of a general good report in
the world. Ahab's humiliation put a demurrer to God's judgments intended
against him, and some ascribe the great victories and success of the Romans,
to that justice which was obser\'ed among themselves. Baruch was but an
amanuensis to the prophet Jeremiah to write his prophecy, and very despon-
dent of his own welfare, Jer. xlv. 13. God upon that account provides for
his safety, and rev.'ards the industry of his service with the security of his
person. He was not a statesman, to declare against the corrupt counsels of
them that sat at the helm ; nor a prophet, to declare against their profane
practices, but the prophet's scribe ; and as he writes in God's service the

356 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

prophecies revealed to the prophet, God writes his name in the roll of those
that were designed for preservation in that deluge of judgments which were to
come upon that nation. Epicurus complained of the administration of God,
that the virtuous moralist had not sufficient smiles of divine favour, nor the
swinish sensualist frowns of divine indignation. But what if they have not
always that confluence of outward wealth and pleasures, but remain in the
common level ! Yet they have the happiness and'satisfaction of a clear re-
putation, the esteem of men, and the secret applause of their enemies, besides
the inward ravishments upon an exercise of virtue, and the commendatory
subscription of their own hearts, a dainty the vicious man knows not of ;
they have an inward applause from God as a reward of divine goodness,
instead of those racks of conscience upon which the profane are sometimes
stretched. He will not let the worst men do him any service (though they never
intended in the act of service him, but themselves) without giving them their
wages. He will not let them hit him in the teeth, as if he were beholden
to them. If Nebuchadnezzar be the instrument of God's judgments against
Tyrus and Israel, he will not only give him that rich city, but a richer coun-
try, Egypt, the granary of her neighbours, a wages above his work. In this
is divine goodness eminent, since in the most moral actions, as there is
something beautiful, so there is something mixed, hateful to the infinitely
exact holiness of the divine nature ; yet he will not let that which is pleasing
to him go unrewarded, and defeat the expectations of men, as men do with
those they employ, when, for one flaw in an action, they deny them the re-
ward due for the other part. God encouraged and kept up morality in the
cities of the Gentiles, for the entertainment of a further goodness in the
doctrine of the gospel, when it should be published among them.

(4.) Divine goodness is eminent in providing a Scripture as a rule to guide
us, and continuing it in the world. If man be a rational creature, govern-
able by a law, can it be imagined there should be no revelation of that law
to him ? Man, by the light of reason, must needs confess himself to be in
another condition than he was by creation, when he first came out of the
hands of God ; and can it be thought that God should keep up the world
under so many sins against the light of nature, and bestow so many provi-
dential influences to invite men to return to him, and acquaint no men in
the world with the means of that return ? Would he exact an obedience ef
men, as their consciences witness he doth, and furnish them with no rules
to guide them in the darkness, they cannot but acknowledge that they have
contracted ? No ; divine goodness hath otherwise provided. This Bible
we have, is his word and rule ! Had it been a falsity and imposture, would
that goodness that watches over the world have continued it so long ? That
goodness that overthrew the burdensome rites of Moses, and expelled the
foolish idolatry of the Pagans, would have discovered the imposture of this,
had it not been a transcript of his own will. Whatever mistakes he suf-
fers to remain in the world, what goodness had there been to sufier this
anciently among the Jews, and afterwards to open it to the whole world, to
abuse men in religion and worship, which so nearly concerned himself and
his own honour, that the world should be deceived by the devil, without a
remedy, in the morning of its appearance ! It hath been honoured and
admired by some heathens when they have cast their eyes upon it, and their
natural light made them behold some footsteps of a divinity in it. If this,
therefore, be not a divine prescript, let any that deny it bring as good argu-
ments for any book else, as can be brought for this. Now, the publishing
this is an argument of divine goodness ; it is designed to win the affections
of beggarly man, to be espoused to a God of eternal blessedness and immense

Mark X. 18. J god's goodness. 357

riches. It speaks words in season ; no doubts but it resolves, no spiritual
distemper but it cures, no condition but it hath a comfort to suit it. It is a
garden which the hand of divine bounty hath planted for us. In it he con-
descends to shadow himself in those expressions that render him in some
manner intelligible to us. Had God wrote in a loftiness of style suitable to
the greatness of his majesty, his writing had been as little understood by
us, as the brightness of his glory can be beheld by us. But he draws
phrases from our affairs to express his mind to us ! He incarnates himself
in his word to our minds, before his Son was incarnate in the flesh to the
eyes of men. He ascribes to himself eyes, ears, hands, that we might have,
from the consideration of ourselves and the whole human nature, a con-
ception of his perfections ; he assumes to himself the members of our bodies,
to direct oui* understandings in the knowledge of his Deity. This is his
goodness !

Again, though the Scripture was written upon several occasions, yet, in
the dictating of it, the goodness of God cast his eye upon the last ages of
the world : 1 Cor. x. 11, ' They are written for our admonition, upon whom
the ends of the world are come.' It was given to the Israelites, bat divine
goodness intended it for the future Gentiles. The old writings of the prophets
were thus designed, much more the later writings of the apostles. Thus
did divine goodness think of us, and prepare his records for us, before we
w^ere in the world ; these he hath written plain for our instruction, and
wrapped up in them what is necessary for our salvation. It is clear to in-
form our understanding, and rich to comfort us in our misery ; it is a light
to guide us, and a cordial to refresh us ; it is a lamp to our feet, and a medi-
ciue for our diseases ; a purifier of our filth, and a restorer of us in our
faintings. He hath by his goodness sealed the truth of it, by his efficacy on
multitudes of men ; he hath made it the ' word of regeneration,' James i,.
18. Men, wilder and more monstrous than beasts, have been tamed and
changed by the power of it. It hath raised multitudes of dead men from a
grave fuller of horror than any earthly one. Again, goodness was in all
ages sending his letters of advice and counsel from heaven, till the canon of
Scripture was closed. Sometimes he wrote to chide a froward people, some-
times to cheer up an oppressed and disconsolate people, according to the
state wherein they were, as we may observe by the several seasons wherein
parts of Scripture were written. It was his goodness that he first revealed
anything of his will after the fall ; it was a further degree of goodness, that he
would add more cubits to its stature ; before he would lay aside his pencil, it
grew up to that bulk wherein we have it. And his goodness is further seen in
the preserving it. He hath triumphed over the powers that opposed it, and
shewed himself good in the instruments that propagated it ; he hath main-
tained it against the blasts of hell, and spread it in all languages against the ob-
structions of men and devils. The sun of his word is by his kindness preserved
in our horizon, as well as the sun in the heavens. How admirable is divine
goodness ! He hath sent bis Son to die for us, and his written word to in-
struct^us, and his Spirit to edge it for an entrance into our souls. He hath
opened the womb of the earth to nourish us, and sent down the records of
heaven to direct us in our pilgrimage ; he hath provided the earth for our
habitation while we are travellers, and sent his word to acquaint us with a
felicity at the end of our journey, and the way to attain in another world
what we want in this, viz., a happy immortality.

(5.) His goodness in his government is evident, in conversions of men.
Though his work be wrought by his power, yet his power was first solicited
by his goodness. It was his rich goodness that he would employ his power

858 chaenock's woeks. [Maek X. 18.

to pierce the scales of a heart as hard as those of the leviathan. It was this
that opened the ears of men to hear him, and draws them from the hurry
of worldly cares, and the charms of sensual pleasures ; and, which is the
top of all, the imposture and cheats of their own hearts. It is this that
sends a spark of his wrath into men's consciences, to put them to a stand
in sin, that he might not send down a shower of brimstone eternally to con-
sume their persons. This it was that first shewed you the excellency of the
Redeemer, and brought you to taste the sweetness of his blood, and find your
security in the agonies of his death. It is his goodness to call one man
and not another, to turn Paul in his course, and lay hold of no other of
his companions. It is his goodness to call any, when he is not bound to
call one.

[l.J It is his goodness to pitch upon mean and despicable men in the eye
of the world ; to call this poor publican, and overlook that proud Pha-
risee ; this man that sits upon a dunghill, and neglect him that glisters in
bis purple. His majesty is not enticed by the lofty titles of men ; nor,
which is more worth, by the learning and knowledge of men. ' Not many
wise, not many mighty,' 1 Cor. i. 26-28; not many doctors, not many
lords, though some of them ; but his goodness condescends to the * base
things of the world, and things which are despised.' ' The poor receive the
gospel,' Mat. xi. 5, when those that are more acute, and furnished with a
more apprehensive reason, are not touched by it.

[2, J The worst men. He seizeth sometimes upon men most soiled, and
neglects others that seem more clean and less polluted. He turns men in
their course in sin, that by their infernal practices have seemed to have gone
to school to hell, and to have sucked in the sole instructions of the devil.
He lays hold upon some, when they are most under actual demerit, and
snatcheth them as firebrands out of the fire ; as upon Paul, when fullest of
rage against him ; and shoots a beam of grace, where nothing could be
justly expected but a thunderbolt of wrath. It is his goodness to visit any,
when they lie putrefying in their loathsome lusts ; to draw near to them
who have been guilty of the greatest contempt of God, and the light of
nature, — the murdering Manassehs, persecuting Sauls, Christ-crucifying
Jews, persons in whom lusts had had a peaceable possession and empire
for many years.

[3.] His goodness appears in converting men possessed with the greatest
enmity against him, while he was dealing with them. All were in such a
state, and framing contrivances against him, when divine goodness knocked
at the door. Col, i. 21. He looked after us, when our backs were turned
upon him, and sought us when we slighted him, and were a ' gainsaying
people,' Rom. x. 21 ; when we had shaken ofi' his convictions, and con-
tended with our Maker, and mustered up the powers of nature against the
alarms of conscience ; struggled like wild bulls in a net, and blunted those
darts which stuck in our souls. Not a man that is turned to him, but had
lifted up the heel against his gospel-grace, as well as made light of his
creating goodness. Yet it hath employed itself about such ungrateful
wretches, to polish those knotty and rugged pieces for heaven ; and so invin-
cibly, that he would not have his goodness defeated by the fierceness and
rebellion of the flesh, though the thing was more difficult in itself (if any-
thing may be said to have a difficulty to omnipotency) than to make a stone
live, or to turn a straw into a marble pillar. The malice of the flesh makes
a man more unfit for the one, than the nature of the straw unfits it for
the other.

[4. J His goodness appears in turning men, when they were pleased with

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 359

their own misei^, and unable to deliver themselves ; when they preferred
a hell before him, and were in love with their own vileness ; when his call
was our torment, and his neglect of us had been accounted our felicity.
Was it not a mighty goodness to keep the light close to our eyes, when we
endeavoured to blow it out, and the corrosive near to our hearts, when we
endeavoured to tear it off, being more fond of our disease than the remedy ?
We should have been scalded to death with the Sodomites, had not God laid
his good hand upon us, and drawn us from the approaching ruin we affected.
and were loath to be freed from. And had we been displeased with our
state, yet we had been as unable spiritually to raise ourselves from sin to
grace, as to raise ourselves naturally from nothing to being. In this state
we were when his goodness triumplaed over us, when he put a hook into
our nostrils, to turn us in order to our salvation, and drew us out of the
pit which we had digged, when he might have left us to sink under the
rigours of his justice we had merited. Now this goodness in conversion is
greater than that in creation ; as in creation there was nothing to oppose
him, so there was nothing to disoblige him. Creation was terminated to the
good of a mutable nature, and conversion tends to a supernatural good. God
pronounced all creatures good at first, and man among the rest, but did not
pronounce any of them, or man himself, his portion, his inheritance, his
serjuUah, his house, his diadem. He speaks slightly of all those things
which he made, the noblest heavens as well as the lowest earth, in compa-
rison of a true convert: Isa. Ixvi. 1, 2, 'All those things hath my hand
made, and all those things have been ; but to this man will I look, to him
that is of a contrite spirit.' It is more goodness to give the espousing grace
of the covenant than the completing glory of heaven. As it is more for a
prince to marry a beggar, than only to bring her to live deliciously in his
courts ; all other benefits are of a meaner strain, if compared with this ;
there is little less of goodness in imparting the holiness of his nature, than
imputing the righteousness of his Son.

(6.) The divine goodness doth appear in answering prayers. He delights
to be familiarly acquainted with his people, and to hear them call upon him.
He indulgeth them a free access to him, and delights in every address of an
upright man, Prov. xv. 8. The wonderful efficacy of prayer depends not
upon the nature of our petitions, or the temper of our soul, but the good-
ness of God, to whom we address. Christ establisheth it upon this bottom ;
when he exhorts to ask in his name, he tells them the spring of all their
grants is the Father's love : John xvi. 26, 27, ' I say not, I will pray the
Father for you : for the Father himself loves you.' And since it is of itself
incredible that a majesty exalted above the cherubims should stoop so low
as to give a miserable and rebellious creature admittance to him, and afi'ord
him a gracious hearing, and a quick supply, Christ ushers in the promise of
answering prayer with a note of great assurance: Luke xi. 9, 10, 'I say
unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you.' I, that know the mind of my
Father, and his good disposition, assure you your prayer shall not be in
vain. Perhaps you will not be so ready of yourselves to imagine so great a
liberality ; but take it upon my word ; it is true, and so you will find it.
And his bounty travails as it were in birth, to give the greatest blessings
upon our asking rather than the smallest. Ver. 13, ' Your heavenly Father
shall give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him,' which in Mat. vii, 11 is
called ' good things.' Of all the good and rich things divine goodness hath
in its treasury, he delights to give the best upon asking, because God doth
act so as to manifest the greatness of his bounty and magnificence to men ;
and therefore is delighted when men, by their petitioning him, own such a

860 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

liberal disposition in him, and put him upon the manifesting it. He would
rather you should ask the greatest things heaven can afford, than the trifles
of this world ; because his bounty is not discovered in meaner gifts, he loves
to have an opportunity to manifest his affection above the liberality and
tenderness of worldly fathers. He doth more wait to give in a way of grace
than we to beg, Isa. xxx. 18, and therefore 'will the Lord wait, that he
may be gracious unto you.' He stands expecting your suits, and employs
his wisdom in pitching upon the fittest seasons, when the manifestation of
his goodness may be most gracious in itself, and the mercy you want most
welcome to you ; as it follows, ' for the Lord is a God of judgment.' He
chooseth the time wherein his doles may be most acceptable to his sup-
pliants : Isa. xlix. 8, ' In an acceptable time have I heard thee.' He often
opens his hand while we are opening our lips, and his blessings meet our
petitions at the first setting out upon their journey to heaven : Isa. Ixv. 24,
* While they are yet speaking, I will hear.' How often do we hear a secret
voice within us while we are praying, saying. Your prayer is granted, as well
as hear a voice behind us while we are erring, saying, ' This is the way,
walk in it'! And his liberality exceeds often our desires as well as our
deserts, and gives out more than we had the wisdom or confidence to ask.
The apostle intimates it in that doxology, Eph. iii. 20, ' Unto him who is
able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think.' This power would
not have been so strong an argument of comfort if it were never put in
practice ; he is more liberal than his creatures are craving. Abraham peti-
tioned for the life of Ishmael, and God promiseth him the birth of Isaac,
Gen. xvii. 18, 19. Isaac asks for a child, and God gives him two. Gen.
XXV. 21, 22. Jacob desires food to eat and raiment to put on; God confines
not his bounty within the narrow limits of his petition, but instead of a staff
wherewith he passed Jordan, makes him repass it with two bands. Gen.
xxviii. 20. David asked life of God, and he gave him life and a crown to
boot, Ps. xxi. 2-5. The Israelites would have been contented with a free
life in Egypt, they only cried to have their chains struck off; God gave them
that, and adopts them to be his peculiar people, and raises them into a
famous state. It is a wonder that God should condescend so much, that he
should hear prayers so weak, so cold, so wandering, and gather up our sin-
cere petitions from the dung of our distractions and diffidence. David vents
his astonishment at it : Ps. xxxi. 21, 22, • Blessed be God, for he hath
shewed me marvellous kindness. I said in my haste, I am cut off from be-
fore thy eyes : neverthless thou heardest the voice of my supplication.' How
do we wonder at the goodness of a petty man in granting our desires ! how
much more should we at the humility and goodness of the most sovereign
Majesty of heaven and earth!

(6.) The goodness of God is seen in bearing with the infirmities of his
people, and accepting imperfect obedience. Though Asa had many blots in
his scutcheon, yet they are overlooked, and this note set upon record by
divine goodness, that his heart was perfect towards the Lord all his days :
1 Kings XV. 14, * But the high places were not removed; nevertheless Asa's
heart was perfect with the Lord all his days.' He takes notice of a sincere,
though chequered obedience, to reward it, which could claim nothing but a
slight from him if he were extreme to mark what is done amiss. When
there is not an opportunity to work, but only to will, he accepts the will as
if it had passed into work and act. ' He sees no iniquity in Jacob,' Num.
xxiii. 21 ; i. e. he sees it not so as to cast off a respect to their persons and
the acceptance of their services. His omniscience knows their sins, but his
goodness doth not reject their persons. He is of so good a disposition, that

Makk X. 18.j god's goodness. 861

he delights in a weak obedience of his servants, not in the imperfection, but
in the obedience : Ps, xxxvii. 23, ' He dehghts in the way of a good man,'
though he sometimes slips in it. He accepts a poor man's pigeon as well as
a rich man's ox. He hath a bottle for the tears, and a book for the services
of the upright, as well as for the most perfect obedience of angels, Ps. Ivi. 8.
He preserves their tears as if they were a rich and generous wiue, as the
vine-dresser doth tbe expressions of the grape.

(8.) The goodness of God is seen in afflictions and persecutions. If it
be good for us to be afflicted, for which we have the psalmist's vote, Ps.
cxix. 71, then goodness in God is the principal cause and orderer of the
afflictions. It is his goodness to snatch away that whence we fetch sup-
ports for our security, and encouragements for our insolence against him.
He takes away the thing which we have some value for, but such as his
infinite wisdom sees inconsistent with our true happiness. It is no ill will
in the physician to take away the hurtful matter the patient loves, and pre-
scribe bitter potions, to advance that health which the other impaired ; nor
any mark of unkindness in a friend to wrest a sword out of a madman's
hand, wherewith he was about to stab himself, though it was beset with the
most orient pearls. To prevent what is evil is to do us the greatest good.
It is a kindness to prevent a man from falling down a precipice, though it
be with a violent blow that lays him flat upon the ground at some distance
from the edge of it. By afflictions he often snaps asunder those chains
which fettered us, and quells those passions which ravaged us. He sharpens
our faith, and quickens our prayers ; he brings us into the secret chamber
of our own heart, which we had little mind before to visit by a self-exami-
nation. It is such a goodness that he will vouchsafe to correct man in order
to his eternal happiness, that Job makes it one part of his astonishment :
Job vii. 17, ' What is man, that thou shouldst magnify him ? that thou
shouldst set thy heart upon him ? and that thou shouldst visit him every
morning, and try him every moment ? ' His strokes are often the magnify-
ings and exaltings of men. He sets bis heart upon man while he inflicts
the smart of his rod. He shews thereby what a high account he makes of
him, and what a special afi'ection he bears to him. When he might treat us
with more severity after the breach of his covenant, and make his jealousy
flame out against us in furious methods, he will not destroy his relation to
us, and leave us to our own inclinations, but deal with us as a father with
his children ; and when he takes this course with us, it is when it cannot
be avoided without ruin. His goodness would not sufier him to do it if our
badness did not force him to it : Jer. ix. 7, ' I will melt them, and try them,
for how shall I do for the daughter of my people ? ' What other course can
I take but this according to the nature of man ? The goldsmith hath no
other way to separate the dross from the metal but by melting it down.
And when the impurities of his people necessitate him to this proceeding,
he ' sits as a refiner,' Mai. iii. 3. He watches for the purifying the silver,
not for his own profit as the goldsmith, but out of a care of them, and good
will to them. As himself speaks, Isa. xlviii. 10, ' I have refined thee, but
not with silver,' or, as some read it, ' not for silver.' As when ho scatters
his people abroad for their sin, he will not leave them without his presence
for their sanctuary, Ezek. xi. 16. He would by his presence with them
supply the place of ordinances, or be an ark to them in the midst of the
deluge. His hand that struck them is never without a goodnese to comfort
them and pity them. When Jacob was to go into Egypt, which was to prove
a furnace of affliction to his ofispring, God promises to ' go down' with him,
and to ' bring him up again,' Gen. xlvi. 4 ; a promise not only made to

362 chaknock's works. [Mark X. 18.

Jacob in his person, but to Jacob in his posterity. He returned not out of
Egypt in his person, but as the father of a numerous posterity. He that
would go down with their root, and afterwards bring up the branches, was
certainly with them in all their oppressions. I will go down with thee.
Down ! saith one.* What a word is that for a Deity ! Into Egypt, idolatrous
Egypt ! What a place is that for his holiness ! Yet, oh the goodness of
God ! he never thinks himself low enough to do his people good, nor any
place too bad for his society with them. So when he had sent away into
captivity the people of Israel by the hand of the Assyrian, his bowels yearn
after them in their affliction. Isa. lii. 4, 5, ' The Assyrian oppressed them
without cause,' i.e. without a just cause in the conqueror to inflict so great
an evil upon them, but not without cause from God, whom they had pro-
voked. ' Now, therefore, what have I here ? saith the Lord.' What do I
here ? I will not stay behind them. What do I longer here ? For I will
redeem again those jewels the enemy hath carried away. That chapter is
a prophecy of redemption. God shews himself so good to his people in
their persecutions, that he gives them occasion to glorify him in the very
fires, as the divine order is, Isa. xxiv. 15, ' Wherefore glorify the Lord in
the fires.'

(9.) The goodness of God is seen in temptations. In those he takes
occasion to shew his care and watchfulness, as a father uses the distress of
a child as an opportunity for manifesting the tenderness of his affection.
God is at the beginning and end of every temptation ; he measures out both
the quality and quantity. He exposeth them not to temptation beyond the
ability he hath already granted them, or will at the time, or afterwards
multiply in them; 1 Cor. x. 13. He hath promised his people that 'the
gates of hell shall not prevail against them ; that ' in all things ' they shall
be ' more than conquerors through him that loved them ; ' that the most
raging malice of hell shall not wrest them out of his hands. His goodness
is not less in performing than it was in promising. And as the care of
his providence extends to the least as well as the greatest, so the watch-
fulness of his goodness extends to us in the least as well as in the greatest
temptation.

[1.] The goodness of God appears in shortening temptations. None of
them can go beyond their appointed times, Dan. xi. 35. The strong blast
Satan breathes cannot blow, nor the waves he raises rage one minute be-
yond the time God allows them ; when they have done their work, and come
to the period of their time, God speaks the word, and the wind and sea of
hell must obey him, and retire into their dens. The more violent tempta-
tions are, the shorter time doth God allot them. The assaults Christ had
at the time of his death were of the most pressing and urging nature. The
powers of darkness were all in arms against him, the reproaches and scorns
put upon him questioning his Sonship were very sharp, yet a little before
his sufferings, he calls it but an hour: Luke xxii. 53, 'This is your hour
and the power of darkness.' A short time that men and devils were com-
bined against him, and the time of temptation that is to come upon all the
world for their trial, is called but an hour, Rev. iii. 10. In all such
attempts, the greatness of the rage is a certain prognostic of the shortness
of the season, Rev. xii. 12.

[2.] The goodness of God appears in strengthening his people under temp-
tations. If he doth not restrain the arm of Satan from striking, he gives us
a sword to manage the combat, and a shield to bear ofi" the blow, Eph. vi.
16, 17. If he obscures his goodness in one part, he clears and brightens it
* Harwood's Sermon at Oxford, p. 5.

Mabk X. 18.] god's goodness. 863

in another. He elthex' binds the strong man that he shall not stir, or gives
us armour to render us victorious. If we fall, it is not for want of provision
from him, but for want of our ' putting on the armour of God,' ver. 11, 13.
When we have not a strength by nature, he gives it us by grace. He often
quells those passions within, which would join hands with and second the
temptation without. He either qualifies the temptation suitably to the force
•we have, or else supplies us with a new strength to make the temptation he
intends to let loose against us. He knows we are but dust, and his good-
ness will not have us unequally matched. The Jews that in Antiochus his
time were under great temptation to apostasy, by reason of the violence of
their persecutions, were * out of weakness made strong ' for the combat, Heb.
xi. 34. The Spirit came more strongly upon Samson when the Philistines
most furiously and confidently assaulted him. His Spirit is sent to strengthen
his people before the deAal is permitted to tempt them : Mat. iv. 2, ' Then
was Jesus led up of the Spirit.' Then ; when ? When the Spirit had, in
an extraordinary manner, descended upon him. Mat. iii. 16, then, and not
before. As the angels appeared to Christ after his temptation to minister
to him, so they appeared to him before his passion, the time of the strongest
powers of darkness, to strengthen him for it. He is so good, that when he
knows our potsherd strength too weak, he furnisheth our recruits from his
own omnipotence : Eph. vi. 10, ' Be strong in the Lord, and in the power
of his might.' He doth, as it were, breathe in something of his own almighti-
ness, to assist us in our wrestling against principalities and powers, and make
us capable to sustain the violent storms of the enemies.

[3.] The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in giving great comforts
in or after them. The Israelites had a more immediate provision of manna
from heaven when they were in the wilderness. We read not that the
Father spake audibly to the Son, and gave him so loud a testimony, that he
was his ' beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased,' till he was upon the
brink of strong temptations. Mat. iii. 17 ; nor sent angels to minister imme-
diately to his person till after his success, Mat. iv. 11. Job never had such
evidences of divine love till after he had felt the sharp strokes of Satan's
malice ; he had heard of God before by the hearing of the ear, but after-
wards is admitted into greater familiarity. Job xlii. 5. He had more choice
appearances, clearer illuminations, and more lively instructions. And
though his people fall into temptation, yet after their rising they have more
signal marks of his favour than others have, or themselves before they fell.
Peter had been the butt of Satan's rage in tempting him to deny Christ, and
he had shamefully complied with the temptation, yet to him particularly
must the first news of the Kedeemer's resurrection be carried by God'a
order in the mouth of an angel : Mark xvi. 7, ' Go your ways, tell his dis-
ciples, and Peter.' We have the greatest communion with God after a
victory ; the most refreshing truths after the devil hath done his worst. God
is ready to furnish us with strength in a combat, and cordials after it.

[4.J The goodness of God is seen in temptations in discovering and ad-
vancing inward grace by this means. The issue of a temptation of a Chris-
tian is often like that of Christ's, the manifesting a greater vigour of the
divine nature in afi"ection3 to God and enmity to sin. Spices perfume not
the air with their scent till they are invaded by the fire ; the truth of grace
is evidenced by them. The assault of an enemy revives and actuates that
strength and courage which is in a man, perhaps unknown to himself as well
as others till he meets with an adversary. Many seem good, not that they
are so in themselves, but for want of a temptation. This many times veri-
fies a virtue which was owned upon trust before, and discovers that we had

864 charnock's woeks. [Mark X< 18.

more grace than we thought we had. The solicitations of Joseph's mistress
cleared up his chastity. We are manj' times under temptation, as a candle
under the snuffer; it seems to be out, but presently burns the clearer.
Afflictions are like those clouds which look black and eclipse the sun from
the earth, but yet when they drop refresh that ground they seem to threaten,
and multiply the grain on the earth to serve for our food ; and so our
troubles, while they wet us to the skin, wash much of that dust from our
graces which in a clearer day had been blown upon us. Too much rest
corrupts ; exercise teacheth us to manage our weapons ; the spiritual armour
would grow rusty without opportunity to furbish it up. Faith receives a new
heart by every combat and by every victory ; like a fire, it spreads itself
further, and gathers strength by the blowing of the wind. While the gar-
dener commands his servant to shake the tree, he intends to fasten its roots
and settle it firmer in its place ; and is this an ill-will to the plant ?

[5.] His goodness is seen in temptations, in preventing sin which we were
likely to fall into. Paul's thorn in the flesh was to prevent the pride of his
spirit, and let out the windiness of his heart, 2 Cor. xii. 7, lest it should be
exalted above measure. The goodness of God makes the devil a polisher,
while he intends to be a destroyer. The devil never works but suitably to
some corruption lurking in us ; divine goodness makes his fiery darts a means
to discover, and so to prevent, the treachery of that perfidious inmate in our
own hearts. Humility is a greater benefit than a putrefying pride. If God
brings us into a wilderness to be tempted of the devil, it is to bring down
our loftiness, to starve our carnal confidence, and expel our rusting security,
Deut. viii. 2. We many times fly under a temptation to God, from whom
we sat too loose before. Is it not goodness to use those means that may
drive us into his own arms ? It is not a want of goodness to soap the gar-
ment, in order to take away the spots. We have reason to bless God for
the assaults from hell, as well as pure mercies from heaven ; and it is a sin
to overlook the one as well as the other, since divine goodness shines in both.

[6.] The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in fitting us more for his
service. Those whom God intends to make choice instruments in his ser-
vice, are first seasoned with strong temptations, as timber reserved for the
strong beams of a building is first exposed to sun and wind, to make it more
compact for its proper use. By this men are brought to answer the end of
their creation, the service of God, which is their proper goodness. Peter
was after his foil by a temptation more courageous in his Master's cause than
before, and the more fitted to strengthen his brethren. Thus the goodness
of God appears in all parts of his government.

- V. I shall now come to the use.

First, Of instruction.

1. If God be so good, how unworthy is the contempt and abuse of his
goodness !

(1.) The contempt and abuse of divine goodness is frequent and common.
It began in the first ages of the world, and commenced a few moments after
the creation ; it hath not to this day diminished its affronts. Adam began
the dance, and his posterity have followed him. The injury was directed
against this, when he entertained the seducer's notion of God's being an envi-
ous Deity, in not indulging such a knowledge as he might have afforded
him : * God doth know that you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,'
Gen. iii. 5. The charge of envy is utterly inconsistent with pure goodness.
What was the language of this notion so easily entertained by Adam, but
that the tempter was better than God, and the nature of God as base and

Mark X. 18. J god's goodness. 865

sordid as the nature of a devil ! Satan paints God with his own colours,
represents him as envious and malicious as himself. Adam admires, and
believes the picture to be true, and hangs it up as a beloved one in the
closet of his heart. The devil still drives on the same game, fills men's
hearts with the same sentiments, and by the same means he murdered our
first parents, he redoubles the stabs to his posterity. Every violation of the
divine law is a contempt of Grod's goodness, as well as his sovereignty, be-
cause his laws are the products both of the one and the other. Goodness
animates them, while sovereignty enjoins them. God hath commanded no-
thing but what doth conduce to our happiness. All disobedience implies
that his law is a snare to entrap us, and make us miserable, and not an act
of kindness to render us happy, which is a disparagement to this perfection,
as if he had commanded what would promote our misery, and prohibited
what would conduce to our blessedness. To go far from him, and walk
after vanity, is to charge him with our iniquity, and unrighteousness, base-
ness, and cruelty in his commands ; God implies it by his speech : Jer. ii. 5,
' What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from
me, and walked after vanity ?' As if, like a tyrant, he had consulted cruelty
in the composure of them, and designed to feast himself with the blood and
misery of his creatures. Every sin is in its own nature a denial of God to
be the chiefest good and happiness, and implies that it is no great matter to
lose him ; it is a forsaking him as the fountain of life, and a preferring a
cracked and empty cistern as the chief happiness before him, Jer. ii. 13.
Though sin is not so evil as God is good, yet it is the greatest evil, and
stands in opposition to God as the greatest good. Sin disorders the frame
of the world, it endeavoured to frustrate all the communications of divine
goodness in creation, and to stop up the way of any further stx'eams of it to
his creatures.

(2.) The abuse and contempt of the divine goodness is base and disin-
genuous. It is the highest wickedness, because God is the highest goodness,
pure goodness, that cannot have anything in him worthy of our contempt.
Let men injure God under what notion they will, they injure his goodness,
because all his attributes are summed up in this one, and all, as it were,
deified by it ; for whatsoever power or wisdom he might have, if he were
destitute of this, he were not God. The contempt of his goodness implies
him to be the greatest evil, and worst of beings. Badness, not goodness, is
the proper object of contempt. As respect is a propension of mind to
something that is good, so contempt is an alienation of the mind from some-
thing as evil, either simply or supposedly evil in its nature, or base or un-
worthy in its action towards that person that contemns it. As men desire
nothing but what they apprehend to be good, so they slight nothing but
what they apprehend to be evil. Since nothing therefore is more contemned
by us than God, nothing more spurned at by us than God, it will follow that
we regard him as the most loathsome and despicable being, which is the
greatest baseness. And our contempt of him is worse than that of devils ;
they injure him under the inevitable strokes of his justice, and we slight
him when we are surrounded with the expressions of his bounty. They
abuse him under vials of wrath, and we under a plenteous liberality. They
malice him, because he inflicts on them what is hurtful ; and we despise
him, because he commands what is profitable, holy, and honourable in its
own nature, though not in our esteem. They are not under those high
obhgations as we ; they abuse his creating, and we his redeeming, goodness.
He never sent his Son to shed a drop of blood for their recovery ; they can
expect nothing but the torment of their persons, and the destruction of their

3G6 ciiarnock's works. []\Iaiik X. 18.

works. But we abuse that goodness, that would rescue us since we are
. miserable, as well as that righteousness which created us innocent. How
base is it to use him so ill, that is not once or twice, but a daily, hourly
benefactor to us ; whose rain drops upon the earth for our food, and whose
sun shines upon the earth for our pleasure, as well as profit ; such a bene-
factor as is the true proprietor of what we have, and thinks nothing too
good for them that think everything too much for his service ! How un-
worthy is it to be guilty of such base carriage towards him, whose benefits
we cannot want nor live without ! How disingenuous both to God and our-
selves, to ' despise the riches of his goodness,' that are designed to ' lead us
to repentance,' Rom. ii. 4, and by that to happiness ! And more heinous
are the sins of renewed men upon this account, because they are against his
goodness, not only offered to them, but tasted by them ; not only against
t-ie notion of goodness, but the experience of goodness, and the rehshed
sweetness of choicest bounty.

(3.) God takes this contempt of his goodness heinously. He never up-
braids men with anything in Scripture, but with the abuse of the good things
he hath vouchsafed them, and the unmindfuluess of the obligations arising
from them. This he bears with the greatest regret and indignation. Thus
he upbraids EH with the preference of him to the priesthood, above other
families, 1 Sam. ii. 28 ; and David, with his exaltation to the crown of
Israel, 2 Sam. xii. 7-9, when they abused those honom's to carelessness and
licentiousness. All sins offend God, but sins against his goodness do more
disparage him ; and therefore his fury is the greater by how much the more
liberally his benefits have been dispensed. It was for abuse of divine good-
ness, as soon as it was tasted, that some angels were hurled from their
blessed habitation and more happy nature. It was for this Adam lost his
present enjoyments and future happiness ; for the abuse of God's goodness
in creation. For the abuse of God's goodness, the old world fell under the
fury of the flood ; and for the contempt of the divine goodness in redemp-
tion, Jerusalem, once the darling city of the infinite monarch of the world,
was made an Aceldama, a field of blood. For this cause it is that candle-
sticks have been removed, great lights put out, nations overturned, and
ignorance hath triumphed in places bright before with the beams of heaven.
God would have little care of his own goodness, if he always prostituted the
fruits of it to our contempt. Why should we expect he should always con-
tinue that to us, which he sees we will never use to his service ? When the
Israelites would dedicate the gifts of God to the service of Baal, then he
would return, and take away his corn and his wine, and make them know by
the loss that those things were his in dominion which they abused, as if they
bad been sovereign lords of them, Hosea ii. 8, 9. Benefits are entailed upon
us no longer than we obey : ' If you forsake the Lord, he will do you hurt,
after he hath done you good,' Josh. xxiv. 20. W^hile we obey, his bounty
shall shower upon us ; and when we revolt, his justice shall consume us.
Present mercies abused are no bulwarks against impendent judgments.
God hath curses as well as blessings, and they shall light more heavy when
his blessings have been more weighty. Justice is never so severe as when
it comes to right goodness, and revenge its quarrel for the injuries received.
A convenient inquiry may be here, How God's goodness is contemned or
abused ?

(1.) By a forgetfulness of his benefits. We enjoy the mercies, and forget
the donor ; we take what he gives, and pay not the tribute he deserves ;
the Israelites ' forgot God their Saviour, which had done great things in
Egypt,' Ps. cvi. 21. We send God's mercies, where we would have God

Maek X. 18.] god's goodness. 367

send our sins, into the land of forgetfulness ; and write his benefits, where
himself will write the names of the wicked, in the dust, which every wind
defaceth. The remembrance soon wears out of our minds, and we are so
far from remembering what we had before, that we scarce think of that hand
that gives, the very instant wherein his benefits drop upon us. Adam
basely forgot his benefactor, presently after he had been made capable to
remember him, and reflect upon him ; the first remark we hear of him, is
of his forgetfulness, not a syllable of his thankfulness. We forget those
Bouls he hath lodged in us, to acknowledge his favours to our bodies ; we
forget that image wherewith he beautified us ; and that Christ he exposed
as a criminal to death for our rescue, which is such an act of goodness as
cannot be expressed by the eloquence of the tongue, or conceived by the
acuteness of the mind. Those things which are so common, that they can-
not be invisible to our eyes, are unregarded by our minds ; our sense prompts
our understanding, and our understanding is deaf to the plain dictates of our
sense. We forget his goodness in the sun, while it warms us, and his
showers while they enrich us ; in the corn while it nourisheth us, and the
wine while it refresheth us : Hosea ii. 8, ' She did not know that I gave her
com, and wine, and oil.' She that might have read my hand in every bit
of bread, and every drop of drmk, did not consider this. It is an injustice
to forget the benefits we receive fi-om man ; it is a crime of a higher nature
to forget those dispensed to us by the hand of God, who gives us those
things that all the world cannot furnish us with, without him. The inhabi-
tants of Troas will condemn us, who worshipped mice, in a grateful remem-
brance of the victory they had made easy for them, by gnawing their enemies'
bow-strings. They were mindful of the courtesy of animals, though unin-
tended by those creatures ; and we are regardless of the fore -meditated
bounty of God. It is in God's judgment a brutishness beyond that of a
stupid ox, or a duller ass : Isa. i. 3, ' The ox knows his owner, and the ass
his master's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people do not consider.'
The ox knows his owner that pastures him, and the ass his master that
feeds him ; but man is not so good as to be like to them, but so bad as to
be inferior to them ; he forgets him that sustains him, and spurns at him,
instead of valuing him for the benefits conferred by him. How horrible is
it, that God should lose more by his bounty, than he would do by his
parsimony ! If we had blessings more sparingly, we should remember
him more gratefully. If he had sent us a bit of bread in a distress by a
miracle, as he did to Elijah by the ravens, it would have stuck loncrer in our
memories, but the sense of daily favours soonest wears out of our minds,
which are as great miracles as any in their own natnre, and the products of
the same power ; but the wonder they should beget in us, is obscured by their
frequency.

(2.) The goodness of God is contemned by an impatient murmuring.
Our repinings proceed from an inconsideration of God's free liberality, and
an ungrateful temper of spirit. Most men are guilty of this. It is implied
in the commendation of Job under his pressures : chap. i. 22, ' In all this
Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,' as if it were a character peculiar
to him, whereby he verified the elogy God had given of him before, verse 8,
that there was ' none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man.'
What is implied by the expression, but that scarce a man is to be found
without unjust complaints of God, and charging him under their crosses
with cruelty, when in the greatest they have much more reason to bless
him for his bounty in the remainder ? Good men have not been innocent.
Baruch complains of God for adding grief to his sorrow, not furnishing him

3G8 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

with those great things he expected, whereas he had matter of thankfulness
in God's gift of his Hfe as a prey, Jer. xlv. 3, 4. But his master chargeth
God in a higher strain : Jer. xx. 7, ' 0 Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I
was deceived ; I am in derision daily.' When he met with reproach instead
of success in the execution of his function, he quarrels with God, as if he
had a mind to cheat him into a mischief, when he had more reason to bless
him for the honour of being employed in his service. Because we have not
what we expect, we slight his goodness in what we enjoy. If he cross us
in one thing, he might have made us successless in more ; if he take away
some things, he might as well have taken away all. The unmerited remain-
der, though never so little, deserves our acknowledgments more than the
deserved loss can justify our repining. And for that which is snatched from
us, there is more cause to be thankful, that we have enjoyed it so long, than
to murmur that we possess it no longer. Adam's sin implies a repining ;
he imagined God had been short in his goodness, in not giving him a know-
ledge he foolishly conceived himself capable of, and would venture a forfeiture
of what already had been bountifully bestowed upon him. ]\Ian thought
God had envied him, and ever since, man studies to be even with God, and
envies him the free disposal of his own doles. All murmuring, either in our
own cause or others', charges God with a want of goodness, because there is
a want of that, which he foolishly thinks would make himself or others
happy. The language of this sin is, that man thinks himself better than
God, and if it were in his power, would express a more plentiful goodness
than his Maker. As man is apt to think himself ' more pure than God,'
Job iv. 17, so of a kinder nature also than an infinite goodness. The
Israelites are a wonderful example of this contempt of divine goodness ;
they had been spectators of the greatest miracles, and partakers of the
choicest deliverance ; he had solicited their redemption from captivity, and
when words would not do, he came to blows for them ; musters up his
judgments against their enemies, and at last, as the Lord of hosts, and God
of battles, totally defeats their pursuers, and drowns them and their proud
hopes of victory in the Bed Sea. Little account was made of all this by
the redeemed ones. ' They lightly esteemed the rock of their salvation,'
and launch into greater unworthiness, instead of being thankful for the break-
ing their yoke ; they are angry with him, that he had done so much for
them ; they repented that ever they had complied with him for their own
deliverance, and had a regret that they had been brought out of Egypt ;
they were angry that they were free men, and that their chains had been
knocked off ; they were more desirous to return to the oppression of their
Egyptian tyrants, than have God for their governor and caterer, and be fed
with his manna. ' It was well with us in Egypt, why came we forth out
of Egypt ?' which is called a ' despising the Lord,' Num. xi. 18, 20. They
were so far from rejoicing in the expectation of the future benefits promised
them, that they murmured that they had not enjoyed less ; they were so
sottish, as to be desirous to put themselves into the irons whence God had
delivered them ; they would seek a remedy in that Egypt, which had been
the prison of their nation, and under the successors of that Pharaoh, who
had been the invader of their liberties ; they would snatch Moses from the
place where the Lord, by an extraordinary providence, hath established him,
Num. xvi. 3, 9, 10, 11 ; they would stone those that minded them of the
goodness of God to them, and thereupon of their crime and their duty ;
they rose against their benefactors, and murmured against God, that had
strengthened the hands of their deliverers ; they despised the manna he
had sent them, and despied the pleasant land he intended them, Ps. cvi. 24 :

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 369

all which was a high contempt of God and his unparalleled goodnes and
care of them. All murmuring is an accusation of divine goodness.

(3.) By unbelief and impenitency. What is the reason we come not to
him when he calls us, but some secret imagination that he is of an ill nature,
means not as he speaks, but intends to mock us, instead of welcoming us ?
When we neglect his call, spurn at his bowels, slight the riches of his grace,
as it is a disparagement to his wisdom to despise his counsel, so it is to his
goodness, to slight his oft'ers, as though you could make better provision for
yourselves than he is able or willing to do. It disgraceth that which is
designed to the praise of the glory of his grace, and renders God cruel to
his own Son, as being an unnecessary shedder of his blood. As the devil,
by his temptation of Adam, envied God the glory of creating goodness, so
unbelief envies God the glory of his redeeming grace. It is a bidding defi-
ance to him, and challenging him to muster up the legions of his judgments,
rather than have sent his Son to sutler for us, or his Spirit to solicit us.
Since the sending his Son was the greatest act of goodness that God could
express, the refusal of him must be the highest reproach of that liberality
God designed to commend to the world in so rare a gift ; the ingratitude in
this refusal must be as high in the rank of sins, as the person slighted is in
the rank of beings, or rank of gifts. Christ is a gift, Rom. v. 16, the
royalest gift, an unparalleled gift, springing from unconceivable treasures
of goodness, John iii. 16. What is our turning our backs upon this gift
but a low opinion of it ? As though the richest jewel of heaven were not so
valuable as a swinish pleasure on earth, and deserved to be treated at no
other rate than if mere oflals had been presented to us. The plain language
of it is, that there were no gracious intentions for our welfare in this pre-
sent ; and that he is not as good in the mission of his Son as he would
induce us to imagine. Impenitence is also an abuse of this goodness, either
by presumption, as if God would entertain rebels that bid defiance against
him, with the same respect that he doth his prostrate and weeping suppliants ;
that he will have the same regard to the swine as to the children, and lodge
them in the same habitation ; or it speaks a suspicion of God as a deceitful
master, one of a pretended, not a real, goodness ; that makes promises to
mock men, and invitations to delude them ; that he is an implacable tyrant,
rather than a good Father ; a rigid, not a kind being, delightful* only to
mark our faults, and overlook our services.

(4.) The goodness of God is contemned by a distrust of his providence.
As all trust in him supposeth him good, so all distrust of him supposeth
him evil ; either without goodness to support his power, or without power
to display his goodness. Job seems to have a spice of this in his complaint,
chap. XXX. 20, ' I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me ; I stand up, and
thou regardest me not.' It is a fume of the serpent's venom, first breathed
into man, to suspect him of cruelty, severity, regardlessness, even under the
daily evidences of his good disposition ; and it is ordinary not to believe
him when he speaks, nor credit him when hs acts ; to question the goodness
of his precepts, and misinterpret the kindness of his providence, as if they
were designed for the supports of a tyranny, and the deceit of the miserable.
Thus the Israelites thought their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, and
the placing them in security in the wilderness, was intended only to pound
them up for a slaughter, Num. xiv, 3. Thus they defiled the lustre of divine
goodness, which they had so highly experimented, and placed not that cor
fidence in him which was due to so frequent a benefactor, and thereby
♦crucified' the rich kindness of God, as Genebrard translates the word
• That is, ' delighting,' or ' full of delight.'— Ed.

VOL. II. A a

370 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

* limited,' Ps. Ixxviii. 41. It is also a jealousy of divine goodness, when we
seek to deliver ourselves from our straits by unlawful ways, as though God
had not kindness enough to deliver us without committing evil. What ! did
God make a world, and all creatures in it, to think of them no more, not to
concern himself in their afiiiirs ? If he be good, he is diffusive, and dehghts
to communicate himself; and what subjects should there be for it but those
that seek him and implore his assistance ? It is an indignity to divine
bounty to have such mean thoughts of it, that it should be of a nature con-
trary to that of his works, which, the better they are, the more diifusive they
are. Doth a man distrust that the sun will not shine any more, or the earth
not bring forth its fruit ? Doth he distrust the goodness of an approved medi-
cine for the expelling his distemper ? If we distrust those things, should
we not render ourselves ridiculous and sottish ? And if we distrust the
Creator of those things, do we not make ourselves contemners of his good-
ness ■? If his caring for us be a principal argument to move as to cast our
care upon him, — as it is 1 Peter v. 7, ' Casting your care upon him, for he
cares for you,' — then, if we cast not our care upon him, it is a denial of his
gracious care of us ; as if he regarded not what becomes of us.

(5.) We do contemn or abuse his goodness by omissions of duty. These
sometimes spring from injurious conceits of God, which end in desperate
resolutions. It was the crime of a good prophet in his passion, 2 Kings vi.
33, ' This pvil is of the Lord, Why should I wait on the Lord any longer ?'
God designs nothing but mischief to us, and we will seek him no longer.
And the complaint of those in Malachi, chap. iii. 14, is of the same nature,
' Ye have said, it is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have
kept his ordinances ?' We have all this while served a hard master, not a
benefactor, and have not been answered with advantages proportionable to
our services ; we have met with a hand too niggardly to dispense that reward
which is due to the largeness of our offerings. When men will not lift up
their eyes to heaven, and solicit nothing but the contrivance of their own
brain, and the industry of their own heads, they disown divine goodness, and
approve themselves as their own gods, and the spring of their own pros-
perity. Those that run not to God in their necessity, to crave his support,
deny either the arm of his power, or the disposition of his will, to sustain and
deliver them ; they must have very mean sentiments, or none at all, of this
perfection, or think him either too empty to fill them, or too churlish to
relieve them ; that he is of a narrow and contracted temper, and that they
may sooner expect to be made better and happier by anything else than by
him. And, as we contemn his goodness by a total omission of those duties
which respect our own advantage and supply, as prayer, so we contemn him
as the chiefest good, by an omission of the due manner of any act of worship,
which is designed purely for the acknowledgment of him. As every omission
of the material part of a duty is a denial of his sovereignty as commanding
it, so every omission of the manner of it, not performing it with a due esteem
and valuation of him, a surrender of all the powers of our souls to him, is
a denial of him as the most amiable object. But certainly to omit those
addresses to God, which his precept enjoins and his excellency deserves,
speaks this language, that they can be well enough, and do well enough,
without God, and stand in no need of his goodness to maintain them. The
neglect or refusal in a malefactor to supplicate for his pardon, is a wrong to,
and contempt of, the prince's goodness ; either implying that he hath not a
goodness in his nature worthy of an address, or that he scorns to be obliged
to him for any exercise of it.

(6.) The goodness of God is contemned or abused in relying upon our

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 871

services toprocure God's good will to us. As, when we stand in need either
of some particular mercy, or special assistance ; when pressures are heavy,
and we have little hopes of ease in an ordinary way ; when the devotions
in course have not prevailed for what we want, we engage ourselves by ex-
traordinary vows and promises to God, hereby to open that goodness which
seems to be locked up from us.* Sometimes, indeed, vows may proceed
from a sole desire to engage ourselves to God, from a sense of the levity and
inconstancy of our spirits ; binding ourselves to God by something more
sacred and inviolable than a common resolution. But many times the vow-
ing the building of a temple, endowing an hospital, giving so much in alms,
if God will free them from a fit of sickness, and spin out a thread of their
lives a little longer, as hath been frequent among the Romanists, arises from
an opinion of laziness, and a selfishness in the divine goodness ; that it
must be squeezed out by some solemn promises of return to him before it
will exercise itself to take their parts. Popular vows are often the effects of
an ignorance of the free and bubbling nature of this perfection of the gener-
ousness and royalty of divine goodness, as if God were of a mean and
mechanic temper, not to part with anything unless he were in some measure
paid for it, and of so bad a nature as not to give passage to any kindness to
bis creature without a bribe. It implies also, that he is of an ignorant, as
well as contracted, goodness ; that he hath so little understanding, and so
much weakness of judgment, as to be taken with such trifles and ceremonial
courtships and little promises ; and meditated only low designs, in imparting
his bounty. It is just as if a malefactor should speak to a prince. Sir, if
you will but bestow a pardon upon me, and prevent the death I have merited
for this crime, I will give you this rattle. All vows made with such a tem-
per of spirit to God, are as injurious and abusive to his goodness as any
man will judge such an ofier to be to a majestic and gracious prince ; as if
it were a trading, not a free and royal goodness,

(7.) The goodness of God is abused, when we give up our souls and
affections to those benefits we have from God ; when we make those
things God's rivals, which were sent to woo us for him, and offer those affec-
tions to the presents themselves which they were sent to solicit for the
master. This is done when either we place our trust in them, or glue our
choicest affections to them. This charge God brings against Jerusalem,
the trusting in her own beauty, glory, and strength, though it was a come-
liness put upon her by God, Ezek. xvi. 14, 15. When a little sunshine of
prosperity breaks out upon us, we are apt to grasp it with so much eager-
ness and closeness, as if we had no other foundation to settle ourselves
upon, no other being that might challenge from us our sole dependence.
And the love of ourselves, and of creatures, above God, is very natural to
us, 2 Tim. iii. 2, 4, ' lovers of themselves,' and ' lovers of pleasure more
than of God.' Self-love is the root, and the love of pleasures the top branch,
that mounts its head highest against heaven. It is for the love of the
world that the dangers of the sea are passed over, that men descend into the
bowels of the earth, pass nights without sleep, undertake suits without in-
termission, wade through many inconveniences, venture their souls, and
contemn God : in those things men glory, and foolishly gi'ow proud by
them, and think themselves safe and happy in them.f Now, to love our-
selves above God, is to own ourselves better than God, and that we tran-
scend him in an amiable goodness. Or if we love ourselves equal with God,
it at least manifests that we think God no better than ourselves, and think
ourselves our own chief good, and deny anything above us to outstrip us in
* Ainyrald, Moral, torn. iv. p. 291. f Cressol, Antliolog. part ii. p. 29.

372 charnock's works. [Mark X. 1 8.

goodness, whereby to deserve to be the centre of our affections and actions.
And to love any other creature above him, is to conclude some defect in
God, that he hath not so much goodness in his own nature as that creature
hath to complete our felicity, that God is a slighter thing than that creature.
It is to account God, what all things in the world are, an imaginary happi-
ness, a goodness of clay ; and them what God is, a supreme goodness. It
is to valne the goodness of a drop above that of the spring, and the goodness
of the spark above that of the sun ; as if the bounty of God were of a less
alloy than the advantages we immediately receive from the hands of a silly
worm. By how much the better we think a creature to be, and place our
affections chiefly upon it, by so much the more deficient and indigent we
conclude God ; for God wants so much in our conception, as the other
thing hath goodness above him in our thoughts. Thus is God lessened
below the creature, as if he had a mixture of evil in him, and were capable
of an imperfect goodness. He that esteems the sun that shines upon him,
the clothes that warm him, the food that nourisheth him, or any other
benefit, above the donor, regards them as more comely and useful than God
himself, and behaves himself as if he were more obliged to them than to
God, who bestowed those advantageous qualities upon them.

(8.) The divine goodness is contemned in sinning more freely upon the
account of that goodness, and employing God's benefits in a drudgery for
our lusts. This is a treachery to his goodness, to make his benefits serve
for an end quite contrary to that for which he sent them ; as if God had
been plentiful in bis blessings, to hire them to be more fierce in their re-
bellions, and fed them to no other purpose but that they might more
strongly kick against him. This is the fruit which corrupt nature producelh.
Thus the Egypt'ans, who had so fertile a country, proved unthankful to the
Creator, by adoring the meanest creatures, and putting the sceptre of the
monarch of the world into the hands of the sottishest and cruellest beasts.
And the Romans multiply their idols as God multiplied their victories.
This is also the complaint of God concerning Israel, Hos. ii. 8, ' She did
not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver
and gold, which they prepared for Baal.' They ungratefully employed the
blessings of God in the worship of an idol, against the will of the donor.
So in Hos. X. 1, ' According to the multitude of his fruit, he hath in-
creased the altars : according to the goodness of his land, they have made
goodly images.' They followed their own inventions with the strength of
my outward blessings. As their wealth increased, they increased the orna-
ments of their images, so that what were before of wood and stone they
advanced to gold and silver. And the like complaint vou may see, Ezek.
xvi. 17. Thus,

[1.1 The benefits of God are abused to pride, when men, standing upon
a higher ground of outward prosperity, vaunt it loftily above their neigh-
bours,— the common fault of those that enjoy a worldly sunshine, — which the
apostle observes in his direction to Timothy, 1 Tim. v. 17, ' Charge them
that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded.' It is an ill use
of divine blessings, to be filled by them with pride and wind. Also,

[2. J When men abuse plenty to ease ; because they have abundance, spend
their time in idleness ; and make no other use of divine benefits, than to
trifle away their time, and be utterly useless to the world.

[3.] When they also abuse peace and other blessings to security ; as
they which would not believe the threatenings of judgment and the storm
coming from a far country, because the Lord was in Sion, and her king in
her, — Jer. viii. 19, ' Is not the Lord in Sion, is not her king in her ? ' —

Makk X. 18.] god's goodness. 373

thinking they might continue their progress in their sin, because they had
the temple, the seat of the divine glory, Sion, and the promise of an ever-
lasting kingdom to David ; abusing the promise of God to presumption and
security, and turning the grace of God into wantonness.

[4.] Again, when they abuse the bounty of God to sensuality and luxury,
misemploying the provisions God gives them in resolving to live like beasts,
when by a good improvement of them they might attain the life of angels.
Thus is the light of the sun abused to conduct them, and the fruits of the
earth abused to enable them, to their prodigious debanchery ; ' as we do,'
saith one, ' with the Thames, which brings us in provision, and we soil it
with our rubbish.' * The more God sows his gifts, the more we sow our
cockle and darnel. Thus we make our outward happiness the most unhappy
part of our lives, and by the strength of divine blessings exceed all laws of
reason and religion too.

How unworthy a carriage is this, to use the expressions of divine good-
ness as occasions of a greater outrage and affront of him ! When we stab
his honour by those instruments he puts into our hands to glorifj- him ; as
if a favourite should turn that sword into the bowels of his prince, where-
wilh he knighted him, and a servant enriched by a lord should hire by
that wealth murderers to take away his life. How brutish is it, the more
God courts us with his blessings, the more to spurn at him with our feet ;
like the mule, that lifts up its heel against the dam as soon as ever it hath
sucked her ! We never beat God out of our hearts, but by his own gifts ;
he receives no blows from men, but by those instruments he gave them to
promote their happiness. While man is an enjoyer, he makes God a loser
by his own blessings, inflames his rebellion by those benefits which should
kindle his love, and runs from him by the strength of those favours which
should endear the donor to him. ' Do you thus requite the Lord, 0 foolish
people and unwise ?' is the expostulation, Deut. xxxii. 6. Divine goodness
appears in the complaint of the abuse of it, in giving them titles below their
crime, and complaining more of their being unfaithfal to their own interest
than enemies to his glory. 'Foolish and unwise' in neglecting their own
happiness, a charge below the crime, which deserved to be ' abominable,
ungrateful people to a prodigy.' All this carriage towards God is as if a
man should knock the chirurgeon on the head as soon as he hath set and
bound up his dislocated members. So God compares the ungrateful be-
haviour of the Israelites against him: Hosea vii. 15, ' Though I have bound
and strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me : ' a
metaphor taken from a chirurgeon that applies corroborating plasters to a
broken limb.

(9.) We contemn the goodness of God in ascribing our benefits to other
causes than divine goodness. Thus Israel ascribed her felicity, plenty, and
success to her idols, as rewards which her lovers had given her, Hosea ii. 5, 12.
And this charge Daniel brought home upon Belshazzar: Dan. v. 23, ' Thou
hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, and brass, and iron ; and the God
in whose hand is thy breath, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not
glorified.' The God who hath given success to the arms of thy ancestors,
and conveved by their hands so large a dominion to thee, thou hast not
honoured in the same rank with the sordidest of thy idols. It is the same
case when we own him not as the author of any success in our affairs, but
by an overweening conceit of our own sagacity, applaud and admire our-
selves, and overlook the hand that conducted us, and brought our endeavours
to a good issue. We eclipse the glory of divine goodness by setting the
* Young, of AfBiction, p. 34.

374 chaknock's works. [Mark X. 18.

crown that is due to it upon the head of our own industry : a sacrilege
worse than Belshazzar's drinking of wine, with his lords and concubines, in
the saered vessels pilfered from the temple, as in that place of Daniel. This
was the proud vaunt of the Assyrian conqueror, for which God threatens
to punish the fruit of his stout heart : Isa. x. 12-14, ' By the strength of
my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom ; for I am prudent : and I
have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures,
and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man.' Not a word of
divine goodness and assistance in all this, but applauding his own courage
and conduct. This is a robbing of God to set up ourselves, and making
divine goodness a footstool to ascend into his throne. And as it is unjust,
so it is ridiculous, to ascribe to ourselves or instruments the chief honour of
any work ; as ridiculous as if a soldier after a victory should erect an altar
to the honour of his sword, or an artificer oflfer sacrifices to the tools whereby
he completed some excellent and useful invention : a practice that every
rational man would disdain where he should see it. It is a discarding any
thoughts of the goodness of God, when we imagine that we chiefly owe any-
thing in this world to our own industry or wit, to friends or means, as though
divine goodness did not open its hand to interest itself in our affairs, support
our ability, direct our counsels, and mingle itself with anything we do.
God is the principal author of any advantage that accrues to us, of any wise
resolution we fix upon, or any proper way we take to compass it ; no man
can be wise in opposition to God, act wisely or well without him ; his
goodness inspires men with generous and magnificent counsels, and furnisheth
them with fit and proportionable means ; when he withdraws his hand, men's
heads grow foolish, and their hands feeble ; folly and weakness drops upon
them, as darkness upon the world upon the removal of the sun. It is an
abuse of divine goodness not to own it, but erect an idol in its place. Ezra
was of another mind, when he ascribed to the good hand of God the pro-
vididing ministers for the temple, and not to his own care and diligence,
Ezra viii. 18; and Nehemiah, the success he had with the king in the behalf
of his nation, and not solely to his favour with the prince, or the arts he
used to please him, Neh. ii. 8.

2. The second information is this : if God be so good, it is a certain
argument that man is fallen from his original state. It is the complaint of
man sometimes, that other creatures have more of earthly happiness than
men have, live freer from cares and trouble, and are not racked with that
Bolicitousness and anxiety as man is, have not such distempers to em-
bitter their lives. It is a good ground for man to look into himself, and
consider whether he hath not, some ways or other, disobliged God more
than other creatures can possibly do. We often find that the creatures men
have need of in this state do not answer the expectation of man. ' Cursed
be the ground for thy sake,' Gen. iii. 17. A fruitful land is made barren,
thorns and thistles triumph upon the face of the earth instead of good fruit.
Is it like that goodness which is as infinite as his power, and knows no
more limits than his almightiness, should imprint so many scars upon the
world, if he had not been heinously provoked by some miscarriage of his
creature ? Infinite goodness could never move infinite justice to inflict
punishment upon creatures, if they had not highly merited it. We cannot
think that any creature was blemished with a principle of disturbance as it
came first out of the hand of God. All things were certainly settled in a
due order and dependence upon one another ; nothing could be ungrateful,
and unuseful to man by the original law of their creation ; if there had, it
had not been goodness, but evil and baseness, that had created the world.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 375

When we see, therefore, the course of nature overturned, the order divine
goodness had placed disturbed, and the creatures pronounced good and useful
to man employed as instruments of vengeance against him, we must con-
clude some horrible blot upon human nature, and very odious to a God of
infinite goodness, and that this blot was dashed upon man by himself, and
his own fault ; for it is repugnant to the infinite goodness of God to put
into the creature a sinning nature, to hurry him into sin, and then punish
him for that which he had impressed upon him. The goodness of God
inclines him to love goodness wherever he finds it, and not to punish any
that have not deserved it by their own crimes. The curse we therefore
see the creatures groan under, the disorders in nature, the frustrating the
expectations of man in the fruits of the earth and plentiful harvests, the
trouble he is continually exposed to in the world, which tethers down his
spirit from more generous employments, shews that man is not what he
was when divine goodness first erected him, but hath admitted into his
nature something more uncomely in the eye of God, and so heinous that it
puts his goodness sometimes to a stand, and makes him lay aside the bless-
ings his hand was filled with, to take up the arms of vengeance where-
with to fight against the world. Divine goodness would have secured
his creatures from any such invasions, and never used those things against
man, which he designed in the first frame for man's service, were there
not some detestable disorder risen in the nature of man, which makes
God withhold his liberality, and change the dispensations of his numerous
benefits into legions of judgments. The consideration of the divine good-
ness, which is a notion that man naturally concludes to be inseparable
from the Deity, would, to an unbiassed reason, verify the' history of those
punishments settled upon man in the third chapter of Genesis, and make
the whole seem more probable to reason at the first relation. This instruc-
tion naturally flows from the doctrine of divine goodness. If God be so
good, it is a certain argument that man is fallen from his original state.

3. The third information is this, if God be infinitely good, there can be
no just complaint against God if men be punished for abusing his goodness.
Man had nothing, nay, it was impossible he could have anything, from in-
finite goodness to disoblige him, but to engage him. God never did, nay,
never could, draw his sword against man till man had shghted him, and
affronted him by the strength of his own bounty. It is by this God doth
justify his severest proceedings against men, and very seldom charges them
with any else as the matter of their provocations : Hosea ii. 3, ' Therefore
will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in
the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax.' And in Ezekiel
xvi., after he had drawn out a bill of complaint against them, and inserted
only an abuse of bis benefits as a justification of what he intended to do, he
concludes, verse 27, ' Behold, therefore, I have stretched out my hand over
thee, and diminished thy ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of
them that hate thee.' When men sufier, they sufi'er justly ; they were not
constrained by any violence, or forced by any necessity, nor provoked by
any ill usage, to turn head against God, but broke the bands of the strongest
obligations and most tender allurements. What man, what devil, can justly
blame God for punishing them, after they had been so intolerably bold as
to fly in the face of that goodness that had obliged them, by giving them
beings of a higher elevation than to inferior creatures, and furnishing them
with sufficient strength to continue in their first habitation ? Man seems
to have less reason to accuse God of rigour than devils, since after his un-
reasonable revolt, a more express goodness than that which created him

376 charnock's woeks. [Mark X. 18.

hath solicited him to repentance, courted him by melting promises and
expostulations, added undeniable arguments of bounty, and drawn out the
choicest treasures of heaven in the gift of his Son, to prevail over men's
perversity. And yet man, after he might arrive to the height and happiness
of an angel, will be fond of continuing in the meanness and misery of a
devil ; and more strongly link himself to tlie society of the damned spirits,
wherein by his first rebellion he had incorporated himself. Who can blame
God for vindicating his own goodness from such desperate contempts, and
the extreme ingratitude of man ? If God be good, it is our happiness to
adhere to him ; if we depart from him, we depart from goodness ; and if
evil happen to us, we cannot blame God, but ourselves, for our departure.*
Why are men happy ? Because they cleave to God. Why are men miser-
able ? Because they recede from God. It is then our own fault that we
are miserable ; God cannot be charged with any injustice if we be miser-
able, since his goodness gave means to prevent it, and afterwards added
means to recover us from it, but all despised by us. The doctrine of divine
goodness justifies every stone laid in the foundation of hell, and every spark
in that burning furnace, since it is for the abuse of infinite goodness that it
was kindled.

4. The fourth information : here is a certain argument, both for God's fit-
ness to govern the world, and his actual government of it.

(1.) This renders him fit for the government of the world, and gives him
a full title to it. This perfection doth the psalmist celebrate throughout the
107th Psalm, where he declares God's works of providence, ver. 8, 15, 21,
32. Power without goodness would deface, instead of preserving. Ruin is
the fruit of rigour without kindness ; but God, because of his infinite and im-
mutable goodness, cannot do anything unworthy of himself, and uncomely in
itself, or destructive to any moral goodness in the creature. It is impossible
he should do anything that is base, or act anything but for the best, because
he is essentially and naturally, and therefore necessarily, good. As a good
tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, so a good God cannot produce evil acts ;
no more than a pure beam of the sun can engender so much as a mite of
darkness, or infinite heat produce any particle of cold. As God is so much
light that he can be no darkness, so he is so much good that he can have no
evil; and because there is no evil in him, nothing simply evil can be pro-
duced by him. Since he is good by nature, all evil is against his nature,
and God can do nothing against his nature. It would be a part of impo-
tence in him to will that which is evil ; and therefore the misery man feels,
as well as the sin whereby he deserves that misery, are said to be from him-
self: Hosea xiii. 9, '0 Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.' And though
God sends judgments upon the world, we have shewn these to be intended
for the support and vindication of his goodness. And Hezekiah judged no
otherwise, when, after the threatening of the devastation of his house, the
plundering his treasures, and captivity of his posterity, he replies, ' Good is
the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken,' Isa. xxxix. 8. God cannot act
anj'thing that is base and cruel, because his goodness is as infinite as his power,
and his power acts nothing but what his wisdom directs, and his goodness
moves him to. Wisdom is the head in government, omniscience the eye.
power the arm, and goodness the heart and spirit in them, that animates all,

(2.) As goodness renders him fit to govern the world, so God doth actually

govern the world. Can we understand his perfection aright, and yet imagine

that he is of so morose a disposition as to neglect the care of his creatures ?

that his excellency, which was displayed in framing the world, should with-

* Petav. Theolog. Dogmat. vol. i. p. 407.

Maek X. 'S.] god's goodness. 377

draw and wrap up itself in his own bosom, without looking out and darting
itself out in the disposal of them ? Can that which moved him first to erect
a world, suffer him to be unmindful of his own work? Would he design
first to display it in creation, and afterwards obscure the honour of it?
That cannot be entitled an infinite, permanent goodness, which should be so
indifferent as to let the creatures tumble together as they please, without
any order, after he had moulded them in his hand. If goodness be diffusive
and communicative of itself, can it consist with the nature of it to extend
itself to the giving the creatures being, and then withdraw and contract itself,
not caring what becomes of them ? It is the nature of goodness, after it
hath communicated itself, to enlarge its channels. That fountain that
springs up in a little hollow part of the earth, doth in a short progress
increase its streams, and widen the passages through which it runs. It
would be a blemish to divine goodness if he did desert what he made, and
leave things to wild confusions, which would be if a good hand did not
manage them and a good mind preside over them. This is the lesson in-
tended to us by all his judgments, ' That the living may know that the Most
High rules in the kingdoms of men,' Dan. iv. 17. If he doth not actually
govern the world, he must have devolved it somewhere, either to men or
angels ; not to men, who naturally want a goodness and wisdom to govern
themselves, much mere to govern others exactly. And besides the misin-
terpretations of actions, they are liable to the want of patience to bear with
the provocations of the world ; since some of the best at one time in the
world, and in the greatest example of meekness and sweetness, would have
kindled a fire in heaven to have cousumed the Samaritans, for no other
affront than a non-entertainment of their Master and themselves, Luke ix. 54.
Nor hath he committed the disposal of things to angels, either good or bad;
though he useth them as instruments in his government, yet they are not
the principal pilots to steer the world. Bad angels certainly are not ; they
would make continual ravages, meditate ruin, never defeat their own counsels,
which they manage by the wicked as their instruments in the world, nor fill
their spirits with disquiet and restlessness when they are engaged in some
ruinous design, as often is experienced. Nor hath he committed it to
the good angels, who, for aught we know, are not more numerous than the
evil ones are ; but besides, we can scarcely think their finite nature capable
of so much goodness as to bear the innumerable debaucheries, villanies,
blasphemies vented in one year, one week, one day, one hour, throughout
the world. Their zeal for their Creator might well be supposed to move
them to testify their affection to him, in a constant and speedy righting of
his injured honour upon the heads of the offenders. The evil angels have
too much cruelty, and would have no care of justice, but take pleasure in
the blood of the most innocent as well as the most criminal. And the good
angels have too little tenderness to sufier so many crimes. Since the world,
therefore, continues without those floods of judgments which it daily merits,
since, notwithstanding all the provocations, the order of it is preserved, it is
a testimony that an infinite goodness holds the helm in his hands, and spreads
its warm wings over it.

5. The fifth information is this : Hence we may infer the ground of all
religion, it is the perfection of goodness. As the goodness of God is the
lustre of all his attributes, so it is the foundation and link of all true reli-
gious worship. The natural religion of the heathens was introduced by the
consideration of divine goodness, in the being he had bestowed upon them ,
and the provisions that were made for them. Divine bounty was the motive
to erect altars, and present sacrifices, though they mistook the object of

378 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

their worship, and offered the dues of the Creator to the instruments whereby
he conveyed his benefits to them. And you find that the religion instituted
by him among the Jews, was enforced upon them by the consideration of
their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, the preservation of them in the
wilderness, and the infeoflfing them in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Every act of bounty and success the heathens received, moved them to
appoint new feasts, and repeat their adorations of those deities they thought
the authors and promoters of their victories and warfare. The devil did
not mistake the common sentiment of the world in divine service, when he
alleged to God, Job i. 9, that ' Job did not fear him for nought,' i. e. wor-
ship him for nothing. All acts of devotion take their rise from God's libe-
rality, either from what they have, or from what they hope. Praise speaks
the possession, and prayer the expectation of some benefit from his hand.
Though some of the heathens made fear to be the prime cause of the acknow-
ledgment and worship of a deity, yet surely something else besides and
beyond this established so great a thing as religion in the world ; an inge-
nuous religion could never have been born into the world without a notion
of goodness, and would have gasped its last as soon as this notion should
have expired in the minds of men. What encouragement can fear of power
give, without sense of goodness ? Just as much as thunder hath, to invite a
man to the place where it is like to fall and crush him. The nature of fear
is to drive from, and the nature of goodness to allure to, the object. The
divine thunders, prodigies, and other armies of his justice in the world, which
are the marks of his power, could conclude in nothing but a slavish wor-
ship. Fear alone would have made men blaspheme the Deity ; instead of
serving him, they would have fretted against him ; they might have offered
him a trembling worship, but they could never have in their minds thought
him worthy of an adoration ; they would rather have secretly complained of
him, and cursed him in their heart, than inwardly have admired him. The
issue would have been the same which Job's wife advised him to, when God
withdrew his protection from his goods and body, ' Curse God and die,' Job
ii. 9. It is certainly the common sentiment of men, that he that acts cruelly
and tyrannically is not worthy of an integrity to be retained towards him in
the hearts of his subjects ; but Job fortifies himself against this temptation
from his bosom friend, by the consideration of the good he had received
from God, which did more deserve a worship from him than the present evil
had reason to discourage it. Alas ! what is only feared, is hated, not adored.
Would any seek to an irreconcilable enemy ? Would any person affec-
tionately list himself in the service of a man void of all good disposition ?
Would any distressed person put up a petition to that prince who never
gave any experiment of the sweetness of his nature, but always satiated him-
self with the blood of the meanest criminals ? All affection to service is
rooted up, when hopes of receiving good are extinguished. There could
not be a spark of that in the world, which is properly called religion, without
a notion of goodness. The existence of God is the first pillar, and the good-
ness of God in rewarding, the next, upon which coming to him (which
includes all acts of devotion) is established : Heb. xi. 6, ' He that comes
unto God, must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that
diligently seek him.' If either of those pillars be not thought to stand firm,
all religion falls to the ground. It is this as the most agreeable motive, that
the apostle James uses to encourage men's approach to God, because ' he
gives liberally, and upbraideth not,' James i. 5. A man of a kind heart and
bountiful hand, shall have his gate thronged with suppliants, who sometimes
would be willing to lay down their lives. ' For a good man one would even

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 379

dare to die ;' when one of a niggardly or tyrannical temper shall be destitute
of all free and affectionate applications. What eyes would be lifted up to
heaven, what hands stretched out, if there were not a knowledge of goodness
there to enliven their hopes of speeding in their petitions ? Therefore Christ
orders our prayers to be directed to God as a Father, which is a title of ten-
derness, as well as a Father in heaven, a mark of his greatness ; the one to
support our confidence, as well as the other to preserve our distance. God
could not be ingenuously adored and acknowledged, if he were not liberal as
well as powerful. The goodness of God is the foundation of all ingenuous
religion, devotion, and worship.

6. The sixth instruction : The goodness of God renders God amiable.
His goodness renders him beautiful, and his beauty renders him lovely, both
are linked together : Zech. ix. 17, ' How great is his goodness, and how
great is his beauty.' This is the most powerful attractive, and masters the
affections of the soul ; it is goodness only, supposed or real, that is thought
•worthy to demerit* our affections to anything. If there be not a reality of
this, or at least an opinion and estimation of it in an object, it would want
a force and vigour to allure our will. This perfection of God is the load-
stone to draw us, and the centre for our spirits to rest in.

(1.) This renders God amiable to himself. His goodness is his Godhead,
Eom. i. 20. By his Godhead is meant his goodness : if he loves his God-
head for itself, he loves his goodness for itself. He would not be good if he
did not love himself; and if there were anything more excellent, and had a
greater goodness than himself, he would not be good if he did not love that
greater goodness above himself ; for not only a hatred of goodness is evil,
but an indifferent or cold affection to goodness hath a tincture of evil in it.
If God were not good, and yet should love himself in the highest manner,
he would be the greatest evil, and do the greatest evil in that act ; for he
would set his love upon that which is not the proper object of such an affec-
tion, but the object of aversion. His own infinite excellency and goodness
of his nature renders him lovely and delightful to himself; without this, he
could not love himself in a commendable and worthy way, and becoming
the purity of a deity. And he cannot but love himself for this : for as crea-
tures, by not loving him as the supreme good, deny him to be the chiefest
good, so God would deny himself and his own goodness, if he did not love
himself, and that for his goodness ; but the apostle tells us, 2 Tim. ii. 18,
that God ' cannot deny himself.' Self-love upon this account is the only pre-
rogative of God, because there is not anything better than himself, that can
lay any just claim to his affections. He only ought to love himself, and it
would be an injustice in him to himself if he did not. He only can love
himself for this : an infinite goodness ought to be infinitely loved, but he
only being infinite, can only love himself according to the due merit of his
own goodness. He cannot be so amiable to any man, to any angel, to the
highest seraphim, as he is to himself, because he is only capable, in regard
of his infinite wisdom, to know the infiniteness of his own goodness. And
no creature can love him as he ought to be loved, unless it had the same
infinite capacity of understanding to know him, and of affection to embrace
him. This first renders God amiable to himself.

(2.) It ought therefore to render him amiable to us. What renders him
lovely to his own eye, ought to render him so to ours ; and since by the
shortness of our understandings we cannot love him as he merits, yet we
should be induced, by the measures of his bounty, to love him as we can.
If this do not present him lovely to us, we own him rather a devil than a
• Qu. * merit' ?— Ed.

880 chabnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

God. If his goodness moved him to frame creatures, his goodness moved him
also to frame creatures for himself and his own glory. It is a mighty wrong
to him not to look with a delightful eye upon the marks of it, and return
an aff'ection to God in some measure suitable to his liberality to us. We
are descended as low as brutes, if we understand him not to be the perfect
good ; and we are descended as low as devils, if our affections are not
attracted by it.

[1.] If God were not infinitely good, he could not be the object of supreme
love. If he were finitely good, there might be other things as good as God,
and then God in justice could not challenge our choicest afiections to him,
above anything else. It would be a defect of goodness in him to demand
it, because he would despoil that which were equally good with him of its
due and right to our affections, which it might claim from us upon the
account of its goodness. God would be unjust to challenge more than was
due to him, for he would claim that chiefly to himself, which another had a
lawful share in. Nothing can be supremely loved, that hath not a triumphant
excellency above all other things. Where there is an equality of goodness,
neither can justly challenge a supremacy, but only an equality of affection.

[2.] This attribute of goodness render? him more lovely than any other
attribute. He never requires our adoration of him so much as the strongest
or wisest, but as the best of beings. He uses this chiefly to constrain and
allure us. Why would he be feared or worshipped, but because ' there is
forgiveness with him'? Ps. cxxx. 4. It is for his goodness' sake that he is
sued to by his people in distress : Ps. xxv, 7, ' For thy goodness' sake, 0 Lord.'
Men may be admired because of their knowledge, but they are afl'ected because
of their goodness. The will, in all the variety of objects it pursues, centres
in this one thing of good as the term of its appetite. All things are beloved
by men because they have been bettered by them, or because they expect to
be the better for them. Severity can never conquer enmity and kindle love.
Were there nothing but wrath in the Deity, it would make him be feared,
but render him odious, and that to an innocent nature. As the spouse
speaks of Christ, Cant. v. 10, 11, so we may of God. Though she com-
mends him for his head, the excellency of his wisdom ; his eyes, the extent
of his omniscience ; his hands, the greatness of his power ; and his legs, the
swiftness of his motions and ways to and for his people ; yet the ' sweetness
of his mouth,' in his gracious words and promises, closes all, and is followed
with nothing but an exclamation that ' he is altogether lovely,' verse 16.
His mouth, in pronouncing pardon of sin, and justification of the person,
presents him most lovely. His power to do good is admirable, but his will
to do good is amiable. This puts a gloss upon all his other attributes.
Though he had knowledge to understand the depth of our necessities, and
power to prevent them or rescue us from them, yet his knowledge would be
fruitless and his power useless, if he were of a rigid nature, and not touched
with any sentiments of kindness.

(3.) This goodness, therelbre, lays a strong obligation upon us. It is true
he is lovely in regard of his absolute goodness, or the goodness of his nature,
but we should hardly be persuaded to return him an affection without his
relative goodness, his benefits to his creatures. We are obliged by both to
love him.

[1.] By his absolute goodness, or the goodness of his nature. Suppose a
creature had drawn its original from something else, wherein God had no
influx, and had never received the least mite of a benefit from him, but from
some other hand, yet the infinite excellency and goodness of his nature
would merit the love of that creature, and it would act sordidly and disin-

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 381

gennously, if it did not discover a mighty respect for God. For, what
ingenuity could there be in a rational creature, that were possessed with no
esteem for any nature filled with unbounded goodness and excellency, though
he had never been obliged to him for any favour ? That man is accounted
odious and justly despicable by man, that reproaches and disesteems, nay,
that doth not value a person of a high virtue in himself, and an universal
goodness and charity to others, though himself never stood in need of his
charity, and never had any benefit conveyed from his hands, nor ever saw
his face, or had any commerce with him ; a value of such a person is but a
just dne to the natural claim of virtue. And indeed, the first object of love
is God in the excellency of his own nature, as the first object of love in
marringe is the person ; the portion is a thing consequent upon it. To love
God only for his benefits, is to love ourselves first, and him secondarily ; to
love God for his own goodness and excellency, is a true love of God, a love
of him for himself. That flaming fire in his own breast, though we have
not a spark of it, hath a right to kindle one in ours to him.

[2.] By his relative goodness, or that of his benefits. Though the ex-
cellency of his own nature, wherein there is a combination of goodness, must
needs ravish an apprehensive mind, yet a reflection upon his imparted kind-
ness, both in the beings we have from him, and the support we have by him,
must enhance this estimation. When the excellency of his nature and the
expressions of his bounty are in conjunction, the excellency of his own
nature renders him estimable in a way of justice, and the greatness of his
benefits renders him valuable in a way of gratitude. The first ravisheth,
and the other allures and melts ; he hath enough in his nature to attract,
and sufficient in his bounty to engage our affections. The excellency of
his nature is strong enough in itself to blow up our affections to him, were
there not a malignity in our hearts, that represents him under the notion of
an enemy ; therefore, in regard of our corrupt state, the consideration of
divine largesses comes in for a share in the elevation of our affections.
For indeed, it is a very hard thing for a man to love another, though never
so well qualified, and of an eminent virtue, while he believes him to be his
enemy, and one that will severely handle him, though he hath before received
many good turns from him. The virtue, valour, and courtesy of a prince,
will hardly make him affected by those against whom he is in arms, and
that are daily pilfered by his soldiers, unless they have hopes of a reparation
from him, and future security from injuries. Christ, in the repetition of the
command to ' love God with all our mind, with all our heart, and with all
our soul,' ?. e. with such an ardency, above all things which glitter in our
eye, or can be created by him, considers him as our God, Mat. xxii. 37. And
the psalmist considers him as one that had kindly employed his power for
him in the eruption of his love : Ps. xviii. 1, « I will love thee, 0 Lord, my
strength !' And so in Ps. cxvi. 1, * I love the Lord, because he hath
heard the voice of my supplications.' An esteem of the benefactor is in-
separable from gratitude for the received benefits ; and should not, then, the
unparalleled kindness of God advance him in our thoughts, much more than
Blighter courtesies do a created benefactor in ours ! It is an obligation on
every man's nature, to answer bounty with gratitude, and goodness with love.
Hence you never knew any man, nor can the records of eternity produce any
man or devil, that ever hated any person, or anything as good in itself; it is
a thing absolutely repugnant to the nature of any rational creature. The
devils hate not God because he is good, but because he is not so good to
them as they would have him, because he will not unlock their chains, turn
them into liberty, and restore them to happiness, i. e. because he will not

882 chaenock's works. [Mark X. 18.

desert the rights of abused goodness. But how should we send up flames
of love to that God, since we are under his direct beams, and enjoy such
plentiful influences ! If the sun is comely in itself, yet it is more amiable
to us by the light we see, and the warmth we feel.

First, The greatness of his benefits have reason to aS'ect us with a love to
him. The impress he made upon our souls when he extracted us from the
darkness of nothing, the comeliness he hath put upon us by his own breath,
the care he took of our recovery when we had lost ourselves, the expense he
was at for our regaining our defaced beauty, the gift he made of his Son, the
afi"ectionate calls we have heard to overmaster our corrupt appetites, move
us to repentance, and make us disaffect onr beloved misery ; the loud sound
of his words in our ears, and the more inward knockings of his Spirit in our
heart, the ofiering us the gift of himself, and the everlasting happiness he
courts us to, besides those common favours we enjoy in the world, which
are all the streams of his rich bounty, — the voice of all is loud enough to
solicit our love, and the merit of all ought to be strong enough to engage
our love : ' There is none like the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the
heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky,' Deut. xxxiii. 26.

Secondly, The uumeritedness of them doth enhance this. It is but reason
to love him who hath loved us fii'st, 1 John iv. 19. Hath he placed his
delight upon any, when they were nothing, and after they were sinfal ; and
shall he set his delight upon such vile persons, and shall not we set our love
upon so excellent an object as himself ? How base are we, if his goodness
doth not constrain us to afi'ect him, who hath been so free in his favour to
us, who have merited the quite contrary at his hands ! If ' his tender
mercies are all over his works,' Ps. cxlv. 9, he ought, for it, to be esteemed
by all his works that are capable of a rational estimation.

Thirdly, Goodness in creatures makes them estimable ; much more should
the goodness of God render him lovely to us. If we love a little spark of
goodness in this or that creature, if a drop be so delicious to us, shall not
the immense sun of goodness, the ever-flowing fountain of all, be much more
delicrhtful ? The original excellency always outstrips what is derived from
it. If so mean and contracted an object as a little creature deserves estima-
tion for a little mite communicated to it, so great and extended a goodness
as is in the Creator much more merits it at om- hands. He is good after the
infinite methods of a deity. A weak resemblance is lovely, much more amiable
then must be the incomprehensible original of that beauty. We love crea-
tures for what we think to be good in them, though it may be hurtful. And
shall we not love God, who is a real and unblemished goodness, and from
whose hand are poured out all those blessings, that are conveyed to us by
second causes ? The object that delights us, the capacity we have to delight
in it, are both from him ; our love therefore to him should transcend the
afi'ection we bear to any instruments he moves for our welfare. ' Among
the gods there is none like thee, 0 Lord ; neither are there any works like
unto thy works,' Ps. Ixxxvi. 8. Among the pleasantest creatures there is
none like the Creator, nor any goodness like unto his goodness. Shall we
love the food that nourisheth us, and the medicine that cures us, and the
silver whereby we furnish ourselves with useful commodities ? Shall we
love a horse or dog, for the benefits we have by them ? And shall not the
sprinc of all those draw our souls after it, and make us aspire to the honour
of lovinff and embracing him who hath stored every creature with that which
may pleasure us ? But instead of endeavouring to parallel our afi'ection with
his kindness, we endeavour to make our disingenuity as extensive and tower-
ing as his divine goodness.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 383

Fourthly, This is the true end of the manifestation of his goodness, that
he might appear amiable, and have a return of aflection. Did God display
his goodness only to be thought of, or to be loved ? It is the want of such
a return that he hath usually aggravated from the benefits he hath bestowed
upon men. Every thought of him should be attended with a motion suit-
able to the excellency of his nature and works. Can we think those nobler
spirits, the angels, look upon themselves, or those frames of things in the
heavens and earth, without starting some practical aflection to him for
them ? Their knowledge of his excellency and works cannot be a lazy con-
templation. It is impossible their wills and aflections should be a thousand
miles distant from their understandings in their operations. It is not the
least part of his condescending goodness to court in such methods the aflec-
tions of us worms, and manifest his desire to be beloved by us. Let us give
him, then, that aflection he deserves, as well as demands, and which cannot
be withheld from him without horrible sacrilege. There is nothing worthy
of love besides him. Let no fire be kindled in our hearts but what may
ascend directly to him,

7. The seventh instruction is this : This renders God a fit object of trust
and confidence. Since none is good but God, none can be a full and satis-
factory ground or object of confidence but God. As all things derive their
beings, so they derive their helpfulness to us from God ; they are not there-
fore the principal objects of trust, but that goodness alone that renders them
fit instruments of our support ; they can no more challenge from us a stable
confidence than they can a supreme afi'ection. It is by this the psalmist
allures men to trust in him : Ps. xxxiv. 8, ' Taste and see how good the
Lord is.' What is the consequence ? ' Blessed is the man that trusts in
thee.' The voice of divine goodness sounds nothing more intelligibly, and
a taste of it produceth nothing more eflectaally than this. As the vials of
his justice are to make us fear him, so the streams of his goodness are to
make us rely on him. As his patience is designed to broach our repentance,
80 his goodness is most proper to strengthen our assurance in him. That
goodness which surmounted so many difiiculties, and conquered so _ many
motions, that might be made against any repeated exercise of it, after it had
been abused by the first rebellion of man ; that goodness that, after so
much contempt of it, appeared in such a majestic tenderness, and threw
aside those impediments which men had cast in the way of divine inclina-
tions : this goodness is the foundation of all reliance upon God. "WTio is
better than God ? And, therefore, who more to be trusted than God ? As
his power cannot act anything weakly, so his goodness cannot act anything
unbecomingly, and unworthy of his infinite majesty. And here consider,

(1.) Goodness is the first motive of trust. Nothing but this could be the
encouragement to man, had he stood in a state of innocence, to present him-
self before God ; the majesty of God would have constrained him to keep
his due distance, but the goodness of God could only hearten his confidence;
it is nothing else now that can preserve the same temper in us in our lapsed
condition. To regard him only as the judge of our crimes, will drive us from
him ; but only the regard of him as the donor of our blessings, will allure us
to him. The principal foundation of faith is not the word of God, but God
himself, and God as considered in this perfection. As the goodness of God
in his invitations, and providential blessings, ' leads us to repentance,' Rom.
ii. 4, so by the same reason the goodness of God, by his promises, leads us
to reliance. If God be not first believed to be good, he would not be
beheved at all in anything that he speaks or swears. If you were not
satisfied in the goodness of a man, though he should swear a thousand

884 CHAr.NocK's works. [Mark X. 18.

times, you would value neither his word nor oath as any security. Many
times, where we are certain of the goodness of a man, we are willing to trust
him without his promise. This divine perfection gives credit to the divine
promises ; they of themselves would not he a sufficient ground of trust,
without an apprehension of his truth ; nor would his truth he very comfort-
able, without a belief of his good will, whereby we are assured, that what he
promises to give he gives liberally, free, and without regret. The truth of
the promiser makes the promise credible, but the goodness of the promiser
makes it cheerfully relied on. In Ps. Ixxiii., Asaph's penitential psalm for
his distrust of God, he begins the first verse with an assertion of this attri-
bute, ver. 1, ' Truly God is good to Israel,' and ends with this fruit of it,
ver. 28, 'I will put my trust in the Lord God.' It is a mighty ill-nature
that receives not with assurance the dictates of infinite goodness (that can-
not deceive or frustrate the hopes we conceive of him), that is nnconceivably
more abundant in the breast and inclinations of the promiser, than expres-
sible in the words of his promise. All true faith works by love. Gal. v. 6,
and therefore necessarily includes a particular eyeing of this excellency in
the divine nature, which renders him amiable, and is the motive and
encouragement of a love to him. His power indeed is a foundation of trust,
but his goodness is the principal motive of it. His power without good
will would be dangerous, and could not allure affection ; and his good will
without power would be useless ; and though it might merit a love, yet
could not create a confidence : both in conjunction are strong grounds of
hope, especially since his goodness is of the same infinity with his wisdom
and power; and that he can be no more wanting in the effusions of this upon
them that seek him, than in his wisdom to contrive, or his power to effect
his designs and works.

(2.) This goodness is more the foundation and motive ot trust under the
gospel than under the law. They under the law had more evidences of
divine power, and their trust eyed that much; though there was an eminency
of goodness in the frequent deliverances they had, yet the power of God had
a more glorious dress than his goodness, because of the extraordinary and
miraculous ways whereby he brought those deliverances about. Therefore
in the catalogue of believers, in Heb. xi., you shall find the power of God to
be the centre of their rest and trust ; and their faith was built upon the
extraordinary marks of divine power, which were frequently visible to them.
But under the gospel, goodness and love was intended by God to be the chief
object of trust ; suitable to the excellency of that dispensation, he would have
an exercise of more ingenuity in the creatures. Therefore it is said, Hosea
iii. 5, a promise of gospel times, ' They shall fear God and his goodness in
the latter days,' when they shall return to ' seek the Lord, and David their
king.' It is not said, they shall fear God and his power, but the Lord and
his goodness, or the Lord for his goodness. Fear is often, in the Old Testa-
ment, taken for faith, or trust. This divine goodness, the object of faith, is
that goodness discovered in David their king, the Messiah, or Jesus. God
in this dispensation recommends his goodness and love, and reveals it more
clearly than other attributes, that the soul might have more prevailing and
sweeter attractives to confide in him.

(3.) A confidence in him gives him the glory of his goodness. Most
nations, that had nothing but the light of nature, thought it a great part of
the honour that was due to God to implore his goodness, and cast their
cares upon it. To do good is the most honourable thing in the world, and
to acknowledge a goodness in a way of confidence, is as high an honour
as we can give to it, and a great part of gratitude for what it hath already

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 385

expressed. Therefore we find often that an acknowledgment of one benefit
received was attended with a trust in him for what they should in the future
need : Ps. Ivi. 13, ' Thou hast delivered my soul from death, wilt thou not
deliver my feet from falling ? ' So 2 Cor. i. 10. And they who have been
most eminent for their trust in him, have had the greatest elogies and com-
mendations from him. As a diffidence doth disparage this perfection, think-
ing it meaner and shallower than it is, so confidence highly honours it. We
never please him more than when we trust in him : Ps. cxlvii. 11, ' The
Lord takes pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy.'
He takes it for an honour to have this attribute exalted by such a carriage
of his creature. He is no less ofi"ended when we think his heart straitened,
as if he were a parsimonious God, than when we think his arm shortened,
as if he were an impotent and feeble God.

Let us therefore make this use of his goodness, to hearten our faith.
When we are scared by the terrors of his justice, when we are dazzled by
the arts of his wisdom, and confounded by the splendour of his majesty, we
may take refuge in the sanctuary of his goodness ; this will encourage us,
as well as astonish us ; whereas the consideration of his other attributes
would only amaze us, but can never refresh us, but when they are considered
marching under the conduct and banners of this. When all the other per-
fections of the divine nature are looked upon in conjunction with this excel-
lency, each of them send forth ravishing and benign influences upon the
applying creature. It is more advantageous to depend upon divine bounty
than our own cares ; we may have better assurance upon this account in
his cares for us than in ours for ourselves. Our goodness for ourselves is
finite, and besides, we are too ignorant ; his goodness is infinite, and
attended with an infinite wisdom ; we have reason to distrust ourselves,
not God. We have reason to be at rest under that kind influence we have
so often experimented ; he hath so much goodness that he can have no
deceit ; his goodness in making the promise, and his goodness in working
the heart to a reliance on it, are grounds of trust in- him r Ps. cxix. 49,
* Remember thy word to thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to
hope.' If his promise did not please him, why did he make it ? If reliance
on the promise did not please him, why did his goodness work it ? It would
be inconsistent with his goodness to mock his creature, and it would be the
highest mockery to publish his word, and create a temper in the heart of
his supplicant suited to his promise, which he never intended to satisfy.
He can as little wrong his creature as wrong himself, and therefore can never
disappoint that faith which in his own methods casts itself into the arms of
his kindness, and is his own workmanship, and calls him author. That
goodness that imparted itself so freely in creation, will not neglect those
nobler creatures that put their trust in him. This renders God a fit object
for trust and confidence.

8. The eighth instruction : This renders God worthy to be obeyed and
honoured. There is an excellency in God to allure, as well as sovereignty
to enjoin, obedience. The infinite excellency of his nature is so great, that
if his goodness had promised us nothing to encourage our obedience, we
ought to prefer him before ourselves, devote ourselves to serve him, and
make his glory our greatest content ; but much more when he hath given
such admirable expressions of his liberality, and stored us with hopes of
richer and fuller streams of it. When David consiilered the absolute good-
ness of his nature, and the relative goodness of his benefits, he presently
expresseth an ardent desire to be acquainted with the divine statutes, that
he might make ingenious returns in a dutiful observance : Ps. cxix. 68,

VOL. II. B b

38G chaenock's works. [Mark X. 18.

* Thou art good, and thou dost good, teach me thy statutes.' As his good-
ness is the original, so the acknowledgment of it is the end of all, which
cannot be without an observance of his will. His goodness requires of us
an ingenious, not a servile obedience.

And this is established upon two foundations.

(1.) Because the bounty of God hath laid upon us the strongest obliga-
tions. The strength of an obligation depends upon the greatness and
numerousness of the benefits received. The more excellent the favours are,
which are conferred upon any person, the more right hath the benefactor to
claim an observance from the person bettered by him. Much of the rule
and empire, which hath been in several ages conferred by communities upon
princes, hath had its first spring from a sense of the advantages they have
received by them, either in protecting them from their enemies, or rescuing
them from an ignoble captivity ; in enlarging their territories, or increasing
their wealth. Conquest hath been the original of a constrained, but bene-
ficence always the original of a voluntary and free subjection.* Obedience
to parents is founded upon their right, because they are instrumental in
bestowing upon us being and life ; and because this of life is so great a
benefit, the law of nature never dissolves this obligation of obeying, and
honouring parents ; it is as long-lived as the law of nature, and hath an
universal practice, by the strength of that law in all parts of the world.
And those rightful chains are not unlocked, but by that which unties the
knot between soul and body. Much more hath God a right to be obeyed
and reverenced, who is the principal benefactor, and moved all those second
causes to impart to us what conduced to our advantage. The just authority
of God over us, results from the superlativeness of his blessings he hath
poured down upon us, which cannot be equalled, much less exceeded by any
other. As therefore upon this account he hath a claim to our choicest
aftections, so he hath also to our most exact obedience ; and neither one nor
other can be denied him, without a sordid and disingenuous ingratitude. God
therefore aggravates the rebellion of the Jews, from the cares he had in the
bringing them up, Isa. ii. 2, and the miraculous deliverance from Egypt,
Jer. xi. 7, 8, implying that those benefits were strong obligations to an in-
genuous observance of him.

(2.) It is established upon this, that God can enjoin the observance of
nothing but what is good. He may, by the right of his sovereign dominion,
command that which is indifi"erent in its own nature ; as in positive laws,
the not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which
had not been evil in itself, set aside the command of God to the contrary ;
and likewise in those ceremonial laws he gave the Jews. But in regard of
the transcendent goodness and righteousness of his nature, he will not, he
cannot command anything that is evil in itself, or repugnant to the true
interest of his creature ; and God never obliged the creature to anything, but
what was so free from damaging it, that it highly conduced to its good and
welfare ; and therefore it is said, 1 John v. 3, ' that his commands are not
grievous,' not grievous in their own nature, nor grievous to one possessed
with a true reason. The command given to Adam in paradise was not
grievous in itself, nor could he ever have thought it so, but upon a false
supposition instilled into him by the tempter. There is a pleasure results
from the law of God to a holy rational nature, a sweetness tasted both by
the understanding and by the will, for they both ' rejoice the heart, and
enlighten the eyes' of the mind, Ps. xix. 8. God being essentially wisdom
and goodness, cannot deviate from that goodness in any orders he gives the
* Amyrald, Dissert, p. 65.

Maek X. 18.] god's goodness. 387

creature ; whatsoever he enacts, must be agreeable to that rale, and there-
fore he can will nothing, but what is good and excellent, and what is good
for the creature ; for since he hath put originally into man a natural in-
stinct to desire that which is good, he would never enact anything for the
creatures' observance, that might control that desire imprinted by himself,
but what might countenance that impression of his own hand,* for if God
did otherwise, he would contradict his own natural law, and be a deluder of
his creatures, if he impressed upon them desires one way, and ordered direc-
tions another. The truth is, all his moral precepts are comely in themselves,
and they receive not their goodness from God's positive command, but that
command supposeth their goodness. If everything were good because God
loves it, or because God wills it, i. e. that God's loving it, or willing it, made
that good which was not good before, then, as Camero well argues somewhere,
God's goodness would depend upon his loving himself. He was good because
he loved himself, and was not good till he loved himself; whereas indeed
God's loving himself doth not make him good, but supposeth him good.
He was good in the order of nature, before he loved himself, and his being
good was the ground of his loving himself, because, as was said before, if
there were anything better than God, God would love that ; for it is incon-
sistent with the nature of God, and infinite goodness, not to love that which
is good, and not to love that supremely which is the supreme good. Further
to understand it, you may consider, if the question be asked, Why God loves
himself ? you would think it a reasonable answer to say. Because he is
good. But if the question be asked, why God is good, you would think
that answer, because he loves himself, would be destitute of reason ; but
the true answer would be, because his nature is so, and he could not be
God if he were not good. Therefore God's goodness is in order of our con-
ception before his self-love, and not his self-love before his goodness. So
the moral things God commands are good in themselves before God com-
mands them ; and such, that if God should command the contrary, it would
openly speak him evil and unrighteous. Abstract from Scripture, and weigh
things in your own reason ; could you conceive God good if he should com-
mand a creature not to love him ? Could you preserve the notion of a good
nature in him if he did command murder, adulterv, tyranny, and cutting of
throats ? You would wonder to what purpose he made the world, and
framed it for society, if such things were ordered that should deface all
comeliness of society. The moral commands given in the word appeared of
themselves very beautiful to mere reason, that had no knowledge of the
written law ; they are good, and because they are so, his goodness had
moved his sovereign authority strictly to enjoin them. Now this goodness,
whereby he cannot oblige a creature to any thing that is evil, speaks him
highly worthy of our observance, and our disobedience to his law to be fuU
of unconceivable malignity ; that is the last thing.

The second use is a use of comfort. He is a good without mixture, good
without weariness, none good but God, none good purely, none good in-
exhaustibly but God ; because he is good, we may upon our speaking expect
his instraction : ' Good is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners in his
way,' Ps. XXV. 8. His goodness makes him stoop to be the tutor to those
worms that lie prostrate before him ; and though they are sinners full of filth,
he drives them not from his school, nor denies them his medicines, if they

* As a heathen, Maximus Tyriiia, Dissert, xiii. p. 220, cv yas '^i'uc, Ail So-jJ.icdai

388 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

apply themselves to bim as a physician. He is good in removing the
punishment due to our crimes, and good in bestowing benefits, not due to
our merits ; because he is good, penitent believers may expect forgiveness :
Ps. Ixxxvii. 5, ' Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive.' He acts not
according to the rigour of the law, but willingly grants his pardon to those
that fly into the arms of the mediator ; his goodness makes him more ready
to forgive, than our necessities make us desirous to enjoy. He charged not
upon Job his impatient expressions in cursing the day of his birth ; his
goodness passed that over in silence ; and extols him for speaking the thing
that is right, right in the main (Job xlii. 7, when he charges his friends for
' not speaking of him the thing that is right, as his servant Job had done').
He is so good, that if we offer the least thing sincerely, he will gi-aciously
receive it ; if we have not a lamb to off'er, a pigeon or turtle shall be accepted
upon his altar ; he stands not upon costly presents, but sincerely tendered
services. All conditions are sweetened by it ; whatsoever any in the world
enjoy is from a redundancy of this goodness, but whatsoever a good man
enjoys is from a propriety in this goodness.

1. Here is comfort in our addresses to him. If he be a fountain and sea
of goodness, he cannot be weary of doing good, no more than a fountain or
sea are of flowing. All goodness delights to communicate itself. Infinite
goodness hath then an infinite delight in expressing itself; it is a part of his
goodness not to be weary of shewing it. He can never then be weary of
being solicited for the effusions of it. If he rejoices over his people to do
them good, he will rejoice in any opportunities offered to him to honour his
goodness, and gladly meet with a fit object for it. He therefore delights in
prayer. Never can we so delight in addressing as he doth in imparting.
He delights more in our prayers than we can ourselves. Goodness is not
pleased with shyness. To what purpose did his immense bounty bestow
his Son upon us, but that we should be * accepted both in our persons and
petitions ' ? Eph. i. 6. ' His eyes are upon the righteous, and his ears
are open to their cry,' Ps. xxxiv. 15. He fixes the eye of his goodness upon
them, and opens the ears of his goodness for them ; he is pleased to behold
them, and pleased to listen to them, as if he had no pleasure in anything
else. He loves to be sought to, to give a vent to his bounty : Job xxii. 21,
' Acquaint thyself with God, and thereby good shall come unto thee.' The
word signifies to accustom ourselves to God. The more we accustom our-
selves in speaking, the more he will accustom himself in giving. He loves
not to keep his goodness close under lock and key, as men do their trea-
sures. If we knock, he opens his exchequer. Mat. vii. 7. His goodness is
as flexible to our importunities as his power is invincible by the arm of a
silly worm. He thinks his liberality honoured by being applied to, and
your address to be a recompence for his expense. There is no reason to
fear, since he hath so kindly invited us, but he will as heartily welcome us.
The nature of goodness is to compassionate and communicate, to pity and
relieve, and that with a heartiness and cheerfulness. Man is weary of being
often solicited, because he hath a finite, not a bottomless goodness. He
gives sometimes to be rid of his suppliant, not to encourage him to a second
approach. But every experience God gives us of his bounty is a motive to
solicit him afresh, and a kind of obligation he hath laid upon himself to
renew it, 1 Sam. xvii. 37. It is one part of his goodness that it is bound-
less and bottomless ; we need not fear the wasting of it, nor any weariness
in him to bestow it. The stock cannot be spent, and infinite kindness can
never become niggardly ; when we have enjoyed it, there is still an infinite
ocean in him to refresh us, and as full streams as ever to supply us. What

Maek X. 18.j god's goodness. 389

an encouragement have we to draw near to God ! We run in our straits to
those that we think have most good will, as well as power to relieve and
protect us. The oftener we come to him, and the nearer we approach to
him, the more of his influences we shall feel. As the nearer the sun, the
more of its heat insinuates itself into us. The greatness of God, joined
with his goodness, hath more reason to encourage our approach to him than
our flight from him, because his greatness never goes unattended with his
goodness ; and if he were not so good, he would not be so great in the
apprehensions of any creature. How may his goodness in the great gift of
his Son encourage us to apply to him, since he hath set him as a day's-
man between himself and us, and appointed him an advocate to present our
requests for us, and speed them at the throne of grace, and he never leaves
till divine goodness subscribes a fiat to our believing and just petitions.

2. Here is comfort in afflictions. What can we fear from the conduct of
infinite goodness ? Can his hand be heavy upon those that are humble
before him ? They are the hands of infinite power indeed, but there is not
any motion of it upon his people but is ordered by a goodness as infinite as
his power, which will not sufl'er any affliction to be too shai-p or too long.
By what ways soever he conveys grace to us here, and prepares us for glory
hereafter, they are good ; and those are the good things he hath chiefly
obliged himself to give: Ps. Ixxxiv. 11, ' Grace and glory will he give, and
no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.' This David
comforted himself with in that which his devout soul accounted the greatest
calamity, ver. 2, his absence from the courts and house of God. Not an ill
will, but a good will directs his scourge ; he is not an idle spectator of our
combats ; his thoughts are fuller of kindness than ours in any case can be
of trouble. And because he is good, he wills the best good in everything
he acts, in exercising virtue or correcting vice. There is no affliction with-
out some apparent mixtures of goodness. When he sneaks how he had
smitten Israel, Jer. ii. 30, he presently adds, ver. 31, ' Have I been a wil-
derness to Israel ? a land of darkness ? ' Though he led them through a
desert, yet he was not a desert to them ; he was no land of darkness to
them. While they marched through a land of barrenness, he was a caterer
to provide them manna, and a place of broad rivers and streams. How
often hath divine goodness made our afflictions our consolations, our diseases
our medicines, and his gentle strokes reviving cordials ! How doth he provide
for us above our deserts, even while he doth punish us beneath our merits !
Divine goodness can no more mean ill, than divine wisdom can be mistaken
in its end, or divine power overruled in its actions. ' Charity thinks no
evil,' 1 Cor. xiii. 5. Charity in the stream doth not, much less doth charity
in the fountain. To be afflicted by a hand of goodness hath something com-
fortable in it, when to be afflicted by an evil hand is very odious. Elijah,
who was loath to die by the hand of a whorish, idolatrous Jezebel, was very
desirous to ' die by the hand of God,' 1 Kings xix. 2-4. He accounted it
a misery to have died by her hand, who hated him, and had nothing but
cruelty, and therefore fled from her, when he wifshed for death as a desirable
thing by the hand of that God who had been good to him, and could not but
be good in whatsoever he acted.

3. The third comfort flowing from this doctrine of the goodness of God
is, it is a ground of assurance of happiness. If God be so good that nothing
is better, and loves himself as he is good, he cannot be wanting in love to
those that resemble his nature and imitate his goodness. He cannot but
love his own image of goodness ; wherever he finds it, he cannot but be
bountiful to it; for it is impossible there can be any love to any object with-

890 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

out -wishing well to it and doing well for it. If the soul loves God as its
chiefest good, God will love the soul as his pious servant. As he hath
offered to him the highest allurements, so he will not withhold the choicest
communications. Goodness cannot be a deluding thing ; it cannot consist with
the nobleness and largeness of this perfection to invite the creature to him, and
leave the creature empty of him when it comes. It is inconsistent with this
perfection to give the creature a knowledge of himself, and a desire of enjoy-
ment larger than that knowledge, a desire to know and enjoy him perpetu-
ally, yet never intend to bestow an eternal communication of himself upon
it. The nature of man was erected by the goodness of God, but with an
enlarged desire for the highest good, and a capacity of enjoying it. Can
goodness be thought to be deceitful, to frustrate its own work, be tried with
its own effusions, to let a gracious soul groan under its burden, and never
resolve to case him of it, to see delightfully the aspirings of the creature
to another state, and resolve never to admit him to a happy issue of those
desires? It is not agreeable to this unconceivable perfection to be uncon-
cerned in the longings of his creature, since their first longings were placed
in them by that goodness, which is so free from mocking the creature or
falling short of its well-grounded expectations or desires, that it infinitely
exceeds them. If man had continued in innocence, the goodness of God
without question would have continued him in happiness. And since he
hath had so much goodness to restoi-e man, would it not be dishonourable
to that goodness to break his own conditions, and defeat the believing crea-
ture of happiness after it had complied with his terms ? He is a believer's
God in covenant, and is a God in the utmost extent of this attribute, as well
as of any other, and therefore will not communicate mean and shallow
benefits, but according to the grandeur of it, sovereign and divine, such as
the gift of a happy immortality. Since he had no obligation upon him to
make any promise but the sweetness of his own nature, the same is as strong
upon him to make all the words of his grace good. They cannot be invalid
in any one tittle of them, as long as his nature remains the same ; and his
goodness cannot be diminished without the impairing of his Godhead, since
it is insepara|ble from it. Divine goodness will not let any man serve God
for nought. He hath promised our weak obedience more than any man in
his right wits can say it merits : Mat. x, 42, ' A cup of cold water shall not
lose its reward.' He will manifest our good actions, as he gave so high a
testimony to Job in the face of the devil his accuser. It will not only be
the happiness of the soul but of the body, the whole man, since soul and
body were in conjunction in the acts of righteousness ; it consists not with
the goodness of God to reward the one and to let the other lie in the ruins
of its first nothing ; to bestow joy upon the one for its being principal, and
leave the other without any sentiments of joy, that was instrumental in those
good works, both commanded and approved by God. He that had the good-
ness to pity our original dust, will not want a goodness to advance it ; and
if we put off our bodies, it is but afterwards to put them on repaired and
fresher. From this goodness the upright may expect all the happiness their
nature is capable of.

4. It is a ground of comfort in the midst of public dangers. This hath
more sweetness in it to support us than the malice of enemies hath to
deject us ; because he is good, he is a ' strong hold in the day of trouble,'
Nah. i. 7. If his goodness extends to all his creatures, it will much more
extend to those that honour him ; if the earth be full of his goodness, that
part of heaven which he hath upon earth shall not be emptj' of it. He hath a
goodness often to deliver the righteous, and a justice to put the wicked in

MaBK X. 18.j GODS GOCDNESS. 391

his stead, Prov. xi. 8. Wlien his people have heen under the power of
their enemies, he hath changed the scene, and put the enemies under the
power of his people ; he hath clapped upon them the same bolts which they
did upon his servants. How comfortable is this goodness that hath yet
maintained us in the midst of dangers, preserved us in the mouth of lions,
quenched kindled fire, hitherto rescued us from designed ruin subtilly
hatched, and supported us in the midst of men very passionate for our
destruction ! How hath this watchful goodness been a sanctuary to us in
the midst of an upper hell f

The third use is of exhortation.

1. How should we endeavour after the enjoyment of God as good! How
earnestly should we desire him ! As there is no other goodness worthy of
our supreme love, so there is no other goodness worthy our most ardent
thirst. Nothing deserves the name of a desirable good, but as it tends to
the attainment of this. Here we must pitch our desires, which otherwise
will termioate in nullities or unconceivable distui'bances.

(1.) Consider, nothing but good can be the object of a rational appetite.
The will cannot direct its motion to anything under the notion of evil, evil
in itself, or evil to it ; whatsoever courts it must present itself in the
quality of a good in its own nature, or in its present circumstances to the
present state and condition of the desire, it will not else touch or affect the
will. This is the language of that faculty : Ps. iv. 6, ' Who will shew me
any good ? ' And good is as inseparably the object of the wUl's motion, as
truth is of the understanding's inquiry. Whatsoever a man would allure
another to comply with, he must propose to the person under the notion of
some beneficialness to him in point of honour, profit, or pleasure ; to act
after this manner is tbe proper character of a rational creature. And though
that which is evil is often embraced, instead of that which is good, and what
we entertain as conducing to our feUcity proves our misfortune, yet that is
from our ignorance, and not from a formal choice of it as evil, for what evil
is chosen it is not possible to choose under the conception of evil, but under
the appearance of good, though it be not so in reahty. It is inseparable
from the wills of all men to propose to themselves that which in the opinion
and judgment of their understandings or imagination is good, though they
often mistake and cheat themselves.

(2.) Since that good is the object of a rational appetite, the purest, best,
and most universal good, such as God is, ought to be most sought after.
Since good only is the object of a rational appetite, all the motions of our
souls should be carried to the first and best good ; a real good is most
desirable ; the greatest excellency of the creatures cannot speak them so,
since by the corruption of man they are * subjected to vanity,' Rom. viii. 20.
God is the most excellent good, without any shadow; a real something,
without that nothing which every creature hath in its nature, Isa. xl. 17. A
perfect good can only give us content ; the best goodness in the creature is
but slender and imperfect, had not the venom of corruption infused a vanity
into it ; the make of it speaks it finite, and the best quahties in it are
bounded, and cannot give satisfaction to a rational appetite, which bears in
its nature an imitation of divine infiniteness, and therefore can never find an
eternal rest in mean trifles. God is above the imperfection of all creatures;
creatures are but drops of goodness, at best but shallow streams ; God is
like a teeming ocean, that can fill the largest as well as the narrowest creek.
He hath an accumulating goodness ; several creatures answer several neces-
sities, but one God can answer all our wants ; he hath an universal fulness,

392 charnock's wobks. [^Iark X. 18.

to overtop our universal emptiness; he contains in himself the sweetness of
all other goods, and holds in his bosom plentifully what creatures have in
their natures sparingly. Creatures are uncertain goods ; as they begin to
exist, so they vtmy cease to be ; they may be gone with a breath, they will
certainly languish if God blows upon them, Isa. xl. 24, The same breath
that raised them, can blast them, but who can rifle God of the least part of
his excellency ? Mutability is inherent in the nature of every creature as a
creature. All sublunary things are as gourds, that refresh us one moment
with their presence, and the next fret us with their absence ; like fading
flowers strutting to-day, and drooping to-morrow, Isa. xl. 6. While we
possess them, we cannot clip their wings that may carry them away from us,
and may make us vainly seek what we thought we firmly held. But God is
as permanent a good, as he is a real one ; he hath wings to fly to them that
seek him, but no wings to fly from them for ever, and leave them. God is
an universal good. That which is good to one, may be evil to another ; what
is desirable by one, may be refused as inconvenient for another ; but God
being an universal, unstained good, is useful for all, convenient to the natures
of all, but such as will continue in enmity against him. There is nothing in
God can displease a soul that desires to please him : when we are dark-
ness, he is a light to scatter it ; when we are in want, he hath riches to re-
lieve us ; when we are in a spiritual death, he is a prince of life to deliver
us ; when we are defiled, he is holiness to purify us. It is in vain to fix our
hearts anywhere but on him, in the desire of whom there is a delight, and
in the enjoyment of whom there is an inconceivable pleasure.

(3.) He is to be most sought after, since all things else that are desirable
had their goodness from him. If anything be desirable because of its good-
ness, God is much more desirable because of his, since all things are good by a
participation, and nothing good but by his print upon it. As what being
creatures have was derived to them by God, so what goodness they are
possessed with, they were furnished with it by God. All goodness flowed from
him, and all created goodness is summed up in him. The streams should not
terminate our appetite, without aspiring to the fountain. If the waters in
the channel, which receive mixture, communicate a pleasure, the taste of
the fountain must be much more delicious. That original perfection of all
things, hath an inconceivable beauty above those things it hath ft'amed.
Since those things live not by their own strength, nor nourish us by their
own liberality, but by the word of God, Mat. iv. 4, that God that speaks
them into life, and speaks them into usefulness, should be most ardently
desired as the best. If the sparkling glory of the visible heavens delight
us, and the beauty and bounty of the earth please and refresh us, what should
be the language of our souls upon those views and tastes, but that of the
psalmist : Ps. Ixxiii. 25, ' Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is
none upon earth that I can desire beside thee !' No greater good can pos-
sibly be desired, and no less good should be ardently desired. As he is the
supreme good, so we should bear that regard to him as supremely, and above
all to thirst for him. As he is good, he is the object of desire ; as the
choicest and first goodness, he is desirable with the gi-eatest vehemency.
'Give me children, or else I die,' was an uncomely speech. Gen. xxx. 1.
The one was granted, and the other inflicted ; she had children, but the last
cost her her life. But give me God, or I will not be content, is a gracious
speech, wherein we cannot miscarry ; all that God demands of us is, that
we should long for him, and look for our happiness only in him. That is
the first thing, endeavour after the enjoyment of God as good,

2. Often meditate on the goodness of God. What was man produced

Maek X. 18.] god's goodness. 393

for, but to settle his thoughts upon this ? "What should have been Adam's
employment in innocence, but to read over all the lines of nature, and fix
his contemplations on that good hand that drew them ? What is man endued
with reason for, above all other animals, but to take notice of this goodness
spread over all the creatures, which they themselves, though they felt, could
not have such a sense of, as to make answerable returns to their benefactor ?
Can we satisfy ourselves in being spectators of it and enjoyers of it, only in
such a manner as the brutes are ? The beasts behold things as well as we ;
they feel the warm beams of this goodness as well as we, but without any
reflection upon the author of them. Shall divine blessings meet with no
more from us but a brutish view and beholding of them ? "What is more
just than to spend a thought upon him, who hath enlarged his hand in so
many benefits to us ? Are we indebted to any more than we are to him ?
"VVTiy should we send our souls to visit anything more than him in his
works ? That we are able to meditate on him, is a part of his goodness
to us, who hath bestowed that capacity upon us ; and if we will not, it is a
great part of our ingratitude. Can anything more delightful enter into us,
than that of the kind and gracious disposition of that God who first brought us
out of the abyss of an unhappy nothing, and hath hitherto spread his wings
over us ? "\Vhere can we meet with a nobler object than divine goodness,
and what nobler work can be practised by us than to consider it ? "What
is more sensible in all the operations of his hands, than his skill as they are
considered in themselves, and his goodness as they are considered in relation
to us ? It is strange that we should miss the thoughts of it, that we should
look upon this earth, and everything in it, and yet overlook that which it is
most full of, viz., divine goodness, Ps. xxxiii. 5. It runs through the whole
web of the world ; all is framed and diversified by goodness ; it is one entire
single goodness which appears in various garbs and dresses in every part of
the creation. Can we turn our eyes inward, and send our eyes outward, and
see nothing of a divinity in both, worthy of our deepest and seriousest
thoughts ! Is there anything in the world we can behold but we see his
bounty, since nothing was made but was one way or other beneficial to us ?
Can we think of our daily food, but we must have some reflecting thoughts
on our great caterer ? Can the sweetness of the creature to our palate, ob-
scure the sweetness of the provider to our minds ? It is strange that we
should be regardless of that, wherein every creature without us, and every
sense within us and about us, is a tutor to instruct us ! Is it not reason we
should think of the times wherein we were nothing, and from thence run
back to a never begun eternity, and view ourselves in the thoughts of that
goodness, to be in time brought forth upon this stage, as we are at present.
Can we consider but one act of our understandings, but one thought, one
blossom, one spark of our souls mounting upwards, and not reflect upon the
goodness of God to us, who, in that faculty that sparkles out rational thoughts,
has advanced us to a nobler state, and endued us with a nobler principle,
than all the creatures we see on earth, except those of our own rank and
kind ! Can we consider but one foolish thought, one sinful act, and reflect
upon the guilt and filth of it, and not behold goodness in sparing us, and
miracles of goodness in sending his Son to die for us for the expiation of it!
This perfection cannot well be out of our thoughts, or at least it is horrible
it should, when it is writ in every line of the creation, and in a legible rubric
in bloody letters in the cross of his Son. Let us think with ourselves how
often he hath multiplied his blessings, when we did deserve his wrath ; how
he hath sent one unexpected benefit upon the heel of another, to bring us
with a swift pace the tidings of good will to us ! How often hath he delivered

39-1 charnock's works. [Mark X. 18.

us from a disease that had the arrows of death in its hand, ready to pierce
us ! How often hath he turned our fears into joys, and our distempers into
promoters of our felicity ! How often hath he mated a temptation, sent
seasonable supplies in the midst of a sore distress, and prevented many
dangers which we could not be so sensible of, because we were in a great
measure ignorant of them ! How should we meditate upon his goodness to
our souls in preventing some sins, in pardoning others, in darting upon us
the knowledge of his gospel and of himself in the face of his Son Christ !
This seems to stick much upon the spirit of Paul, since he doth so often
sprinkle his epistles with the titles of the ' grace of God,' ' riches of grace,'
' unsearchable riches of God,' ' riches of glory,' and cannot satisfy himself
with the extolling of it. Certainly we should bear upon our heart a deep
and quick sense of this perfection ; as it was the design of God to manifest it,
so it would be acceptable to God for us to have a sense of it, A dull re-
ceiver of his blessing is no less nauseous to him, than a dull dispenser
of his alms : ' He loves a cheerful giver,' 2 Cor. ix. 7. He doth himself
what he loves in others ; is cheerful in giving, and he loves we should be
serious in thinking of him, and have a right apprehension and sense of
his goodness.

(1.) A right sense of his goodness would dispose us to an ingenuous wor-
ship of God. It would damp our averseness to any act of religion. What
made David so resolute and ready to ' worship towards his holy temple,' but
the sense of his * loving-kindness,' Ps. cxxxviii, 2. This would render him
always in our mind a worthy object of our devotion, a stable prop of our
confidence. We should then adore him when we consider him as ' our God,'
and ourselves as ' the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand,' Ps.
xcv. 7. We should send up prayers with strong faith and feeling, and
praises with great joy and pleasure. The sense of his goodness would make
us love him, and our love to him would quicken our adoration of him ; but
if we regard not this, we shall have no mind to think of him, no mind to act
anything towards him. We may tremble at his presence, but not heartily
worship him ; we shall rather look upon him as a tyrant, and think no other
affection due to him than what we reserve for an oppressor, viz., hatred
and ill-will,

(2.) A sense of it will keep us humble. A sense of it would effect that for
which itself was intended, viz., bring us to a repentance for our crimes, and
not suffer us to harden ourselves against him. When we should deeply con-
sider how he hath made the sun to shine upon us, and his rain to fall upon
the earth for our support, the one to supple the earth, and the other to
assist the juice of it to bring forth fruits, how would it reflect upon us our
ill requitals, and make us hang dowm our heads before him in a low posture,
pleasing to him and advantageous to ourselves ! What would the first
charge be upon ourselves but what Moses brings in his expostulation against
the Israelites : Deut. xsxii. 6, ' Do I thus requite the Lord ? ' What, is this
goodness for me, who am so much below him ; for me, who have so much
incensed him ; for me, who have so much abused what he hath allowed ? It
would bring to remembrance the horror of our crimes, and set us a-blush-
ing before him, when we should consider the multitudes of his benefits, and
our unworthy behaviour, that hath not constrained him, even against the
inclination of his goodness, to punish us. How little should we plead for
a further liberty in sin, or palliate our former faults ! When we set divine
goodness in one column, and our transgressions in another, and compare
together their several items, it would fill us with a deep consciousness of our
own guilt, and divest us of any worth of our own in our approaches to him.

Mark X. 18.] god's goodness. 395

It would humble us, that we cannot love so obliging a God as much as he
deserves to be loved by us ; it would make us humble before men. Who would
be proud of a mere gift, which he knows he hath not merited ? How ridi-
culous would that servant be, that should be proud of a rich livery which is
a badge of his service, not a token of his merit, but of his master's magni-
ficence and bounty, which, though he wear this day, he may be stripped of
to-morrow, and be turned out of his master's family !

(3.) A sense of the divine goodness would make us faithful to him. The
goodness of God obligeth us to serve him, not to offend him. The freeness
of his goodness should make us more ready to contribute to the advance-
ment of his glory. When we consider the benefits of a friend proceed out
of kindness to us, and not out of self-ends and vain applause, it works more
upon us, and makes us more careful of the honour of such a person. It is
a pure bounty God hath manifested in creation and providence, which could
not be for himself, who, being blessed for ever, wanted nothing from us. It
was not to draw a profit from us, but to impart an advantage to us : ' Our
goodness extends not to him,' Ps. xvi. 2. The service of the benefactor is
but a rational return for benefits, whence Nehemiah aggravates the sins of
the Jews : Neb. ix. 35, ' They have not served thee in thy great goodness,
that thou gavest them,' i. e. which thou didst freely bestow upon them. How
should we dare to spend upon our lusts that which we possess, if we con-
sidered by whose liberality we came by it ? How should we dare to be
unfaithful in the goods he hath made us trustees of? A deep sense of divine
goodness will ennoble the creature, and make it act for the most glorious and
noble end. It would strike Satan's temptations dead at a blow. It would
pull off the false mask and vizor from what he presents to us, to draw us
from the service of ourjbenefactor. We could not, with a sense of this, think
him kinder to us than God hath and will be, which is the great motive of
men, to join hands with him and turn Lheir backs upon God.

(4.) A sense of the divine goodness would make us patient under our mise-
ries. A deep sense of this would make us give God the honour of his good-
ness in whatsoever he doth, though the reason of his actions be not apparent
to us, nor the event and issue of his proceedings foreseen by us. It is a
stated case, that goodness can never intend ill, but designs good in all its
acts, ' to them that love God,' Rom. viii. 28 ; nay, he always designs the
best ; when he bestows anything upon his people, he sees it best they should
have it ; and when he removes anything from them, he sees it best they
should lose it. When we have lost a thing we loved, and refuse to be com-
forted, a sense of this perfection, which acts God in all, would keep us from
misjudging our sufferings, and measuring the intention of the hand that sent
them, by the sharpness of what we feel. What patient fully persuaded of
the affection of the physician, would not value him, though that which is
given to purge out the humours rack his bowels ? When we lose what we
love, perhaps it was some outward lustre tickled our apprehensions, and we
did not see the viper we would have harmed ourselves by ; but God seeing
it, snatched it from us, and we mutter as if he had been cruel, and deprived
us of the good we imagined, when he was kind to us, and freed us from the
hurt we should certainly have felt. We should regard that, which in good-
ness he takes from us, at no other rate than some gilded poison and lurking
venom. The sufferings of men, though upon high provocations, are often
followed with rich mercies, and many times are intended as preparations for
greater goodness. When God utters that rhetoric of his bowels, Hosea
xi. 8, * How shall I give thee up, 0 Ephraim ? I will not execute the fierce-
ness of my anger !' he intended them mercy in their captivity, and would

396 chaknock's works. [Mark X. 18.

prepare them by it to walk after the Lord. And it is likely the posterity of
those ten tribes were the first that ran to God, upon the publishing the gos-
pel in the places where they lived. He doth not take away himself, when
he takes away outward comforts. While he snatches away the rattles we
play with, he hath a breast in himself for us to suck. The consideration of
his goodness would dispose us to a composed frame of spirit. If we are
sick, it is goodness it is a disease, and not a hell ; it is goodness that it is a
cloud, and not a total darkness. What if he transfers from us what we
have ? He takes no more than what his goodness first imparted to us, and
never takes so much from his people as his goodness leaves them. If he
strips them of their lives, he leaves them their souls, with those facul-
ties he furnished them with at first, and removes them from those houses of
clay to a richer mansion. The time of our sufterings here, were it the whole
course of our life, bears not the proportion of a moment to that endless eter-
nity, wherein he hath designed to manifest his goodness to us. The con-
sideration of divine goodness would teach us to draw a calm even from storms,
and distil balsam from rods. If the reproofs of the righteous be ' an excel-
lent oil,' Ps. cxli. 5, we should not think the corrections of a good God to
have a less virtue.

(5.) A sense of the divine goodness would mount us above the world. It
would damp our appetites after meaner things ; we should look upon the
world not as a god, but a gift from God, and never think the present better
than the donor. We should never lie soaking in muddy puddles, were we
always filled with a sense of the richness and clearness of this fountain wherein
we might bathe ourselves. Little petty particles of good will give us no
content, when we were sensible of such an unbounded ocean. Infinite
goodness rightly apprehended, would dull our desires after other things, and
sharpen them with a keener edge after that which is best of all. How ear-
nestly do we long for the presence of a friend, of whose good will towards
us we have full experience !

(6.) It would check any motions of envy. It would make us joy in the
prosperity of good men, and hinder us from envying the outward felicity of
the wicked. We should not dare with an evil eye to censure his good hand.
Mat. XX. 15, but approve of what he thinks fit to do, both in the matter of
his liberality, and the subjects he chooseth for it. Though, if the disposal
were in our hands, we should not imitate him, as not thinking them subjects
fit for bounty, yet since it is in his hands, we be to approve of his actions,
and not to have an ill-will towards him for his goodness, or towards those
he is pleased to make the subjects of it. Since all his doles are given to
invite men to repentance, Rom. ii. 4, to envy them those goods God hath
bestowed upon them, is to envy God the glory of his own goodness, and
them the felicity those things might move them to aspire to. It is to wish
God more contracted, and thy neighbour more miserable ; but a deep sense
of his sovereign goodness would make us rejoice in any marks of it upon
others, and move us to bless him instead of censuring him.

(7.) It would make us thankful. What can be the most proper, the most
natural reflection, when we behold the most magnificent characters he hath
imprinted upon our souls, the conveniency of the members he hath com-
pacted in our bodies, but a praise of him ! Such motion had David upon
the first consideration : Ps. cxxxix. 14, ' I will praise thee ; for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made.' What could be the most natural reflection, when
we behold the rich prerogatives of our natures above other creatures, the
provision he hath made for us for our delight in the beauties of heaven, for
our support in the creatures on earth? What can reasonably be expected

Mabk X. 18.] god's goodness. 397

from uncomipted man, to be the first motion of his soul, but an extol-
ling the bountiful hand of the invisible donor, whoever he be ? This would
make us venture at some endeavours of a grateful acknowledgment, though
we should despair of rendering anything proportionable to the greatness
of the benefit ; and such an acknowledgment of our own weakness would be
an acceptable part of our gratitude. Without a due and deep sense of
divine goodness, our praise of it, and thankfulness for it, will be but cold,
formal, and customary ; our tongues may bless him, and our heart slight him.
And this will lead us to the third exhortation ; —

3. Which is that of thankfulness for divine goodness. The absolute good-
ness of God, as it is the excellency of his nature, is the object of praise; the
relative goodness of God, as he is our benefactor, is the object of thankful-
ness. This was always a debt due from man to God ; he had obligations in
the time of his integrity, and was then to render it ; he is not less, but more
obliged to it in the state of corruption ; the benefits being the greater, by
how much the more unworthy he is of them by reason of his revolt. The
bounty bestowed upon an enemy that merits the contrary ought to be received
with a gi-eater resentment than that bestowed on a friend who is not unworthy
of testimonies of respect. Gratitude to God is the duty of every creature
that hath a sense of itself; the more excellent being any enjoy, the more
devout ought to be the acknowledgment. How often doth David stir up,
not only himself, but summon all creatures, even the insensible ones, to join
in the concert! Ps. cxlviii., he calls to the deeps, fire, hail, snow, moun-
tains and bills, to bear a part in this work of praise ; not that they are able
to do it actively, but to shew that man is to call in the whole creation to
assist him passively, and should have so much charity to all creatures, as to
receive what they offer, and so much affection to God as to present to him
what he receives from him.* Snow and hail cannot bless and praise God,
but man ought to praise God for those things, wherein there is a mixture of
trouble and inconvenience, something to molest our sense, as well as some-
thing that improves the earth for fruit. This God requires of us, for this he
instituted several ofierings, and required a little portion of fruits to be pre-
sented to him as an acknowledgment they held the whole from his bounty.
And the end of the festival days among the Jews was to revive the memory
of those signal acts, wherein his power for them, and his goodness to them,
had been extraordinarily evident. It is no more but our mouths to praise
him, and our hand to obey him, that he exacts at our hands. He commands
us not to expend what he allows us, in the erecting stately temples to his
honour ; all the coin he requires to be paid with for his expense, is the ' offer-
ing of thanksgiving,' Ps. 1. 14 ; and this we ought to do as much as we can,
since we cannot do it as much as he merits, for ' who can shew forth all his
praise ?' Ps. cvi. 2. If we have the fruit of his goodness, it is fit he should
have the ' fruit of our lips,' Heb. xiii. 1.5. The least kindness should inflame
our souls with a kindly resentment. Though some of his benefits have a
brighter, some a darker, aspect towards us, yet they all come from this com-
mon spring : his goodness shines in all ; there are the footsteps of goodness
in the least, as well as the smiles of goodness in the greatest ; the meanest,
therefore, is not to pass without a regard of the author. As the glory of God
is more illustrious in some creatures than in others, yet it glitters iii all, and
the lowest as well as the highest administers matter of praise ; but they
are not only little things, but the choicer favours he hath bestowed upon us.
How much doth it deserve our acknowledgment, that he should contrive our
recovery when we had plotted our ruin ! that when he did from eternity
* Qu. 'them'?— Ed.

398 chaknock's works. [Mark X. 18.

behold the crimes T^•herewith we would incense him, he should not, according
to the rights of justice, cast us into hell, but prize us at the rate of the blood
and life of his only Son, in value above the blood of men and lives of angels !
How should we bless that God, that we have yet a gospel among us, that
we are not driven into the utmost regions, that we can attend upon him in
the face of the sun, and not forced to the secret obscurities of the night !
Whatsoever we enjoy, whatsoever we receive, we must own him as the
donor, and read his liand in it. Rob him not of any praise to give to an
instrument. No man hath wherewithal to do us good, nor a heart to do us
good, nor opportunities of benefiting us, without him. When the cripple
received the soundness of his limbs from Peter, he praised the hand that
sent it, not the hand that brought it : Acts iii. 6, 8, he ' praised God.' When
we want anything that is good, let the goodness of divine nature move us to
David's practice, to ' thirst after God,' Ps. xlii. 1 ; and when we feel the
motions of his goodness to us, let us imitate the temper of the same holy man :
Ps. ciii. 2, ' Bless the Lord, 0 my soul ; and forget not all his benefits.' It
is an unworthy carriage to deal with him as a traveller doth with a fountain,
kneel down to drink of it when he is thirsty, and turn his back upon it, and
perhaps never think of it more after he is satisfied.

4. And lastly, imitate this goodness of God. If his goodness hath such
an influence upon us as to make us love him, it will also move us with an
ardent zeal to imitate him in it. Christ makes this use from the doctrine
of divine goodness : Mat. v. 44, 45, ' Do good to them that hate you, that
vou may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : for he makes
his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.' As holiness is a resemblance
of God's purity, so charity is a resemblance of God's goodness ; and this our
Saviour calls perfection : ver. 48, ' Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father which is in heaven is perfect.' As God would not be a perfect God
without goodness, so neither can any be a perfect Christian without kind-
ness ; charity and love being the splendour and loveliness of all Christian
graces, as goodness is the splendour and loveliness of all divine attributes.
This, and holiness, are ordered in the Scripture to be the grand patterns of
our imitation. Imitate the goodness of God in two things.

(1.) In relieving and assisting others in distress. Let our heart be as
large in the capacity of creatures, as God's is in the capacity of a creator.
A large heart from him to us, and a strait heart from us to others, will not
suit. Let us not think any so far below us as to be unworthy of our care,
since God thinks none, that are infinitely distant from him, too mean for his.
His infinite glory mounts him above the creature, but his infinite goodness
stoops him to the meanest works of his hands. As he lets not the trans-
gressions of prosperity pass w-ithout punishment, so he lets not the distress
of his afflicted people pass him without support. Shall God provide for the
ease of beasts, and shall not we have some tenderness towards those that are
of the same blood with ourselves, and have as good blood to boast of as
runs in the veins of the mightiest monarch on earth ; and as mean and as
little as they are, can lay claim to as ancient a pedigree as the stateliest
prince in the world, who cannot ascend to ancestors beyond Adam ? Shall
■we glut ourselves with divine beneficence to us, and wear his livery only on
our own backs, forgetting the afflictions of some dear Joseph, when God,
who hath an unblemished felicity in his own nature, looks out himself to
view and relieve the miseries of poor creatures ? Why hath God increased
the doles of his treasures to some more than others ? Was it merely for
themselves, or rather that they might have a bottom, to attain the honour
of imitating him ? Shall we embezzle his goods to our own use, as if we

Mabk X. 18.] god's goodness. 399

were absolute proprietors, and not stewards entrusted for others ? Shall we
make a difficulty to part with something to others, out of that abundance he
hath bestowed upon any of us ? Did not his goodness strip his Son of the
glory of heaven for a time to enrich us ? and shall we shrug when we are
to part with a little to pleasure him ? It is not very becoming for any to
be backward in supplying the necessities of others with a few morsels, who
have had the happiness to have had their greatest necessities supplied with
his Son's blood. He demands not that we should strip ourselves of all for
others, but of a pittance, something of superfluity, which will turn more to
our account, that what is vainly and unprofitably consumed on our backs
and bellies. If he hath given much to any of us, it is rather to lay aside
part for the income of his service, else we would monopolise divine good-
ness to ourselves, and seem to distrust, under our present experiments, his
future kindness, as though the last thing he gave us was attended with this
language. Hoard up this, and expect no more from me ; use it only to the
glutting your avarice and feeding your ambition ; which would be against
the whole scope of divine goodness. If we do not endeavour to write after
the comely copy he hath set us, we may provoke him to harden himself
against us, and in wrath bestow that on the fire, or on our enemies, which
his goodness hath imparted to us for his glory, and the supplying the neces-
sities of poor creatures ; and, on the contrary, he is so delighted with this
kind of imitation of hina, that a cup of cold water, when there is no more to
be done, shall not be unrewarded.

(2.) Imitate God in his goodness, in a kindness to our worst enemies.
The best man is more unworthy to receive anything from God than the
worst can be to receive from us. How kind is God to those that blaspheme
him, and gives them the same sun and the same showers that he doth to the
best men in the world ! Is it not more our glory to imitate God in doinc
good to those that hate us, than to imitate the men of the world in requiting
evil, by a return of a sevenfold mischief? This would be a goodness which
would vanquish the hearts of men, and render us greater than Alexanders and
Cfesars, who did only triumph over miserable carcases ; yea, it is to triumph
over ourselves in being good against the sentiments of corrupt nature.
Revenge makes us slaves to our passions as much as the offenders, and good
returns render us victorious over our adversaries : * Be not overcome of
evil, but overcome evil with good,' Rom. xii. 21. When we took up arms
against God, his goodness contrived not our ruin, but our recovery. This
is such a goodness of God as could not be discovered in an innocent state.
"While man had continued in his duty, he could not have been guilty of an
enmity, and God could not but affect him' unless he had denied himself ; so
this, of being good to our enemies, could never have been practised in a state
of rectitude, since where was a perfect innocence there could be no spark of
enmity to one another. It can be no disparagement to any man's dignity
to cast his influences on his greatest opposers, since God, who acts for his
own glory, thinks not himself disparaged by sending forth the streams of his
bounty on the wickedest persons, who are far meaner to him than those of
the same blood can be to us. Who hath the worse thoughts of the sun for
shining upon the earth, that sends up vapours to cloud it ? It can be no
disgi-ace to resemble God ; if his hand and bowels be open to us, let not
ours be shut to any.

A DISCOURSE UPON GOD'S DOMINION.

The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens ; and his kingdom ruleth
over alL—PsAi.Td CIII. 19.

The psalm begins with, the praise of God, nvherein the penman excites his
soul to a right and elevated management of so great a duty : ver. 1, ' Bless
the Lord, 0 my soul ; and all that is within me, bless his holy name ; ' and
because himself and all men were insufficient to offer up a praise to God,
answerable to the greatness of his benefits, he summons in the end of the
psalm, the angels and all creatures to join in concert wdth him.
Observe,

1. As man is too shallow a creature to comprehend the excellency of
God, so he is too dull and scanty a creature to offer up a true praise to God,
both in regard of the excellency of his nature, and the multitude and great-
ness of his benefits.

2. We are apt to forget divine benefits ; our souls must therefore be often
jogged and roused up. ' All that is within me,' every power of my rational,
and every affection of my sensitive, part. All his faculties, all his thoughts.
Our souls will hang back from God in every duty, much more in this, if we
lay not a strict charge upon them. We are so void of a pure and entire love
to God, that we have no mind to those duties. Wants will spur us on to
prayer, but a pure love to God can only spirit us to praise. We are more
ready to reach out a hand to receive his mercies, than to lift up our heart
to recognise them after the receipt.

After the psalmist had summoned his own soul to this task, he enumerates
the divine blessings received by him, to awaken his soul by a sense of them
to so noble a work. He begins at the first and foundation mercy to him-
self, the pardon of his sin, and justification of his person, the renewing of
his sickly and languishing nature : ver. 3, ' Who forgives all thy iniquities,
and heals all thy diseases ; ' his redemption from death or eternal destruc-
tion; his expected glorification thereupon, which he speaks of with that
certainty as if it were present: ver. 4, ' Who redeems thy life from destruc-
tion, who crowns thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies.' He makes
his progress to the mercy manifested to the church in protection of it against,
or delivery of it from, oppressors : ver. 6, ' The Lord executeth righteous-
ness and judgment for all that are oppressed ;' in the discovery of his
wnll and law, and the glory of his merciful name to it : ver. 7, 8, ' He
made known his ways unto Moses, and his acts unto the children of Israel.

Ps. CIU. 19.] god's dominion. 401

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.'
"Which latter words may refer also to the free and unmerited spring of the bene-
fits he had reckoned up, viz., the mercy of God, which he mentions also, ver. 10,
' He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our
iniquities ; ' and then extols the perfection of divine mercy in the pardoning
of sin, ver. 11, 12 ; the paternal tenderness of God, ver. 13 ; the eternity
of his mercy, ver. 17; but restrains it to the proper object, ver. 11-17, to
them that fear him, i. e. to them that believe in him ; fenr being the word
commonly used ior faith in the Old Testament, under the legal dispensation,
wherein the spirit of bondage was more eminent than the spirit of adoption,
and their fear more than their confidence.
Observe,

1. All the true blessings grow up from the pardon of sin : ver. 3, * Who
forgives all thine iniquities.' That is the first blessing, the top and crown
of all other favours, which draws all other blessings after it, and sweetens
all other blessings with it. The principal intent of Christ was expiation of
sin, redemption from iniquity ; the purchase of other blessings was conse-
quent upon it. Pardon of sin is every blessing virtually, and in the root
and spring it flows from the favour of God, and is such a gift as cannot be
tainted with a curse, as outward things may.

2. "WTiere sin is pardoned the soul is renewed: ver. 3, ' Who heals all thy
diseases.' "WTiere guilt is remitted, the deformity and sickness of the soul
is cured. Forgiveness is a teeming mercy, it never grows single ; when we
have an interest in Christ, as bearing the chastisement of our peace, we
receive also a balsam from his blood to heal the wounds we feel in our nature.
Isa. liii. 5, ' The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his
stripes we are healed.' As there is a guilt in sin, which binds us over to
punishment, so there is a contagion in sin, which fills us with pestilent
diseases ; when the one is removed, the other is cured. We should not know
how to love the one without the other. The renewing the soul is necessary
for a delightful relish of the other blessings of God. A condemned malefactor
infected with a leprosy, or any other loathsome distemper, if pardoned, could
take httle comfort in his freedom from the gibbet without a cure of his plague.

3. God is the sole and sovereign author of all spiritual blessings : ' Who
forgives all thy iniquities, and heals all thy diseases.' He refers all to God,
nothing to himself in his own merit and strength. All; not the pardon
of one sin merited by me, not the cure of one disease can I owe to my own
power, and the strength of my free will, and the operations of nature ; he,
and he alone, is the prince of pardon, the physician that restores me, the
redeemer that delivers me ; it is a sacrilege to divide the praise between
God and ourselves. God only can knock ofi" our fetters, expel our distem-
pers, and restore a deformed soul to its decayed beauty.

4. Gracious souls will bless God as much for sanctification as for justifi-
cation. The initials of sanctification (and there are no more in this life) are
•worthy of solemn acknowledgment. It is a sign of growth in grace when our
hymns are made up of acknowledgments of God's sanctifying as well [as]
pardoning grace. In blessing God for the one, we rather shew a love to
ourselves ; in blessing God for the other, we cast out a pure beam of love
to God : because by purifying grace we are fitted to the service of our
Maker, prepared to every good work which is delightful to him ; by the
other, we are eased in ourselves. Pardon fills us with inward peace, but
sanctification fills us with an activity for God. Nothing is so capable of
setting the soul in a heavenly tune as the consideration of God as a pardoner
and as a healer.

402 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

5. Where sin is pardoned, the punishment is remitted : ver. 3, 4, * Who
forgives all thy iniquities, and redeems thy life from destruction.' A male-
factor's pardon puts an end to his chains, frees him from the stench of the
dungeon and fear of the gibbet. Pardon is nothing else but the remitting
of guilt, and guilt is nothing else but an obligation to punishment, as a
penal debt for sin. A creditor's tearing a bond, frees the debtor from pay-
ment and rigour.

6. Growth in grace is always annexed to true sanctification : ver, 3, ' So
that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.' Interpreters trouble themselves
much about the manner of the eagle's renewing its youth and regaining its
vigour. He speaks best that saith the psalmist speaks only according to
the opinion of the vulgar, and his design was not to write a natural history.*
Growth always accompanies grace, as well as it doth nature in the body;
not that it is without its qualms and languishing fits, as children are not,
but still their distempers make them grow; grace is not an idle, but an
active, principle. It is not like the psalmist means it of the strength of
the body, or the prosperity and stability of his government, but the vigour
of his grace and comfort, since they are spiritual blessings here that are the
matter of his song. The healing the disease conduceth to the sprouting
up and flourishing of the body. It is the nature of grace to go ' from strength
to strength.'

7. When sin is pardoned, it is perfectly pardoned : ver. 11, 12, * As far as
the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from
us.' The east and west are the greatest distance in the world, the terms
can never meet together. When sin is pardoned, it is never charged again ;
the guilt of it can no more return than east can become west, or west become
east.

8. Obedience is necessary to an interest in the mercy of God: ver. 17,
* The mercy of the Lord is to them that fear him, to them that remember
his commandments to do them.' Commands are to be remembered in order
to practice; a vain speculation is not the intent of the publication of them.

After the psalmist had enumerated the benefits of God, he reflects upon
the greatness of God, and considers him on his throne, encompassed with
the angels, the ministers of his providence: ver. 19, 'The Lord hath pre-
pared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.' He
brings in this of his dominion, just after he had largely treated of his
mercy; either,

1. To signify that God is not only to be praised for his mercy, but for his
majesty, both for the height and extent of his authority.

2. To extol the greatness of his mercy and pity. What I have said now,
0 my soul, of the mercy of God, and his paternal pity, is commended by
his majesty; his grandeur hinders not his clemency; though his throne be
high, his bowels are tender; he looks down upon his meanest servants from
the height of his glory. Since his mnjesty is infinite, his mercy must be as
great as his majesty. It must be a greater pity lodging in his breast than
what is in any creature, since it is not damped by the greatness of his
sovereignty.

3. To render his mercy more comfortable. The mercy I have spoken of,
0 my soul, is not the mercy of a subject, but of a sovereign. An execu-
tioner may torture a criminal, and strip him of his life, and a vulgar pity
cannot relieve him, but the clemency of the prince can perfectly pardon him.
It is that God who hath none above him to control him, none below him to
resist him, that hath performed all the acts of grace to thee. If God by his

* A my raid in he.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 403

supreme authority pardons us, who can reverse it ? If all the subjects of
God in the world should pardon us, and God withhold his grant, what will
it profit us ? Take comfort, 0 my soul, since God from his throne in the
highest, and that God who rules over every particular of the creation, hath
granted and sealed thy pardon to thee. What would his grace signify if he
were not a monarch, extending his royal empire over everything, and sway-
ing all by bis sceptre ?

4. To render the psalmist's confidence more firm in any pressures ; ver.
15, 16. He had considered the misery of man in the shortness of his life,
his place should know him no more, he should never return to his authority,
employments, opportunities that death would take from him ; but howsoever,
the mercy and majesty of God were the ground of his confidence. He draws
himself from poring upon any calamities which may assault him, to heaven,
the place where God orders all things that are done on the earth. He is
able to protect us from our dangers, and to deliver us from our distresses;
whatsoever miseries thou mayest lie under, 0 my soul, cast thy eye up to
heaven, and see a pitying God in a majestic authority ; a God who can
perform what he hath promised to them that fear him, since he hath a
throne above the heaven, and bears sway over all that envy thy happiness
and would stain thy felicity; a God whose authority cannot be curtailed and
dismembered by any. When the prophet solicits the sounding of the divine
bowels, he urgeth him by his dwelling in heaven, the habitation of his holi-
ness : Isa. Ixiii. 15, * His kingdom ruleth over all.' There is none therefore
hath any authority to make him break his covenant or violate his promise.

6. As an incentive to obedience. The Lord is merciful, saith he, ' to them
that remember his commandments to do them,' ver. 17, 18; and then brings
in the text as an encouragement to observe his precepts. He hath a majesty
that deserves it from us, and an authority to protect us in it. If a king in
a small spot of earth is to be obeyed by his subjects, how much more is God,
who is more majestic than all the angels in heaven and monarchs on earth ;
who hath a majesty to exact our obedience, and a mercy to allure it ! We
should not set upon the performance of any duty without an eye lifted up
to God as a great king. It would make us willing to serve him ; the more
noble the person, the more honourable and powerful the prince, the more
glorious is his service. A view of God upon his throne will make us think
his service our privilege, his preceps our ornaments, and obedience to him
the greatest honour and nobility. It will make us weighty and serious in
our performances ; it would stake us down to any duty. The reason we are
so loose and unmannerly in the carriage of our souls before God, is because
we consider him not as a great King, Mai. i. 14. Our Father which art in
heaven, in regard of his majesty, is the preface to prayer.

Let us now consider the words in themselves, ' The Lord hath prepared
his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.'

The Lord hath prepared. The word signifies established as well as pre-
pared, and might so be rendered. Due preparation is a natural way to the
establishment of a thing; hasty resolves break and moulder. This notes,

1. The peculiarity of his authority. He prepares it, none else for him.
It is a dominion that originally resides in his nature, not derived from any
by birth or commission; he alone prepared it. He is the sole cause of his
own kingdom; his authority therefore is unbounded, as infinite as his nature.
None can set laws to him, because none but himself prepared his throne for
him. As he will not impair his own happiness, so he will not abridge him-
self of his own authority.

2. Readiness to exercise it upon due occasions. He hath prepared his

404 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

throne, he is not at a loss, he needs not stay for a commission or instruc-
tions from any how to act. He hath all things ready for the assistance of
his people, he hath rewards and punishments ; his treasures and axes, the
great marks of authority lying by him, the one for the good, the other for
the wicked. His mercy he keeps by him for thousands, Exod. xxxiv. 7 ; his
arrows he hath prepared by him for rebels, Ps. vii. 13.

3. "Wise management of it. It is prepared ; preparations imply prudence ;
the government of God is not a rash and heady authority. A prince upon
his throne, a judge upon the bench, manages things with the greatest discre-
tion, or should be supposed so to do.

4. Successfulness and duration of it. He hath prepared or established it.
It is fixed, not tottering ; it is an immoveable dominion ; all the strugglings
of men and devils cannot overturn it, nor so much as shake it. It is esta-
blished above the reach of obstinate rebels ; he cannot be deposed from it,
he cannot be mated in it. His dominion, as himself, abides for ever. And
as his counsel, so his authority, shall stand ; and ' he will do all his plea-
sure,' Isa. xlvi. 10.

His throne in the heavens. This is an expression to signify the authority
of God ; for as God hath no member properly, though he be so represented
to us, so he hath properly no throne. It signifies his power of reigning and.
judging. A throne is proper to royalty, the seat of majesty in its excellency,
and the place where the deepest respect and homage of subjects is paid, and
their petitions presented. That the throne of God is in the heavens, that
there he sits as a sovereign, is the opinion of all that acknowledge a God.
When they stand in need of his authority to assist them, their eyes are
lifted up, and their heads stretched out to heaven ; so his Son Christ
prayed, ' he lifted up his eyes to heaven,' as the place where his Father sat
in majesty as the most adorable object, Johnxvii. 1. Heaven hath the title
of his throne, as the earth hath that of his footstool, Isa. Ixvi. 1 ; and there-
fore heaven is sometimes put for the authority of God : Dan. iv. 26, ' After
that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule,' i.e. that God, who hath
his throne in the heavens, orders earthly princes and sceptres as he pleases,
and rules over the kingdoms of the world.

His throne in the heavens notes,

1. The glory of his dominion. The heavens are the most stately and
comely pieces of the creation ; his majesty is there most visible, his glory
most splendid, Ps. xix. 1 ; the heavens speak out with a full mouth his
glory. It is therefore called ' the habitation of his holiness and of his
glory,' Isa. Ixiii. 15; there is the greater glister and brightness of his glory.
The whole earth indeed is full of his glory, full of the beams of it ; the
heaven is full of the body of it, as the rays of the sun reach the earth, but
the full glory of it is in the firmament. In heaven his dominion is more
acknowledged by the angels, standing at his beck, and by their readiness
and swiftness obeying his commands, going and returning as a flash of light-
ning, Ezek. i. 14. His throne may well be said to be in the heavens, since
his dominion is not disputed there by the angels that attend him, as it is on
earth by the rebels that arm themselves against him.

2. The supremacy of his empire. The heavens are the loftiest part of the
creation, and the only fit palace for him. It is in the heavens his majesty
and dignity are so sublime, that they are elevated above all earthly empires.

3. Peculiarity of this dominion. He rules in the heavens alone ; there is
some shadow of empire in the world ; royalty is communicated to men as
his substitutes. He hath disposed a vicarious dominion to men in his foot-
stool the earth, he gives them some share of his authority ; and therefore

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 405

the title of his name: Ps. Ixxxii. 6, 'I have said, Ye are gods;' but in
heaven he reigns alone, without any substitutes. His throne is there ; he
gives out his orders to the angels himself ; the marks of his immediate sove-
reignty are there most visible. He hath no vicars-general of that empire.
His authority is not delegated to any creature, he rules the blessed spirits
by himself; but he rules men that are on his footstool by others of the same
kind, men of their own nature.

4. The vastness of his empire. The earth is but a spot to the heavens.
What is England in a map to the whole earth, but a spot you may cover
with your finger; much less must the whole earth be to the extended
heavens. It is but a little point or atom to what is visible; the sun is
vastly bigger than it, and several stars are supposed to be of a greater bulk
than the earth ; and how many and what heavens are beyond, the ignorance
of man cannot understand. If the throne of God be there, it is a larger
circuit he rules in than can well be conceived. You cannot conceive the
many millions of little particles there are in the earth ; and if all put together
be but as one point to that place where the throne of God is seated, how
vast must his empire be ! He rules there over the angels, which excel in
strength, those hosts of his which do his pleasure, in comparison of whom
all the men in the world, and the power of the greatest potentates, is no
more than the strength of an ant or fly. Multitudes of them encircle his
throne, and listen to his orders without roving, and execute them without
disputing. And since his throne is in the heavens, it will follow that all
things under the heaven are parts of his dominion ; his throne being in
the highest place, the inferior things of earth cannot but be subject to him;
and it necessarily includes his influence on all things below, because the
heavens are the cause of all the motion in the world, the immediate thing
the earth doth naturally address to for corn, and wine, and oil, above which
there is no superior but the Lord: Hosea ii. 21, 22, ' The earth hears the
corn, wine, and oil ; the heavens hear the earth, and the Lord hears the
heavens.'

5. The easiness of managing this government. His throne being placed
on high, he cannot but behold all things that are done below ; the height of
a place gives advantage to a pure and clear eye to behold things below it.
Had the sun an eye, nothing could be done in the open air out of its ken.
The throne of God being in heaven, he easily looks from thence upon all the
children of men : Ps. xiv. 2, ' The Lord looked down from heaven upon the
children of men, to see if there were any that did understand.' He looks
not down from heaven as if he were in regard of his presence confined there,
but he looks down majestically, and by way of authority ; not as the look of
a bare spectator, but the look of a governor, to pass a sentence upon them
as a judge. His being in the heavens, renders him capable of ' doing what-
soever he pleases,' Ps. cxv. 3. His throne being there, he can by a word,
in stopping the motions of the heavens, turn the whole earth into confusion.
In this respect it is said ' he rides upon the heaven in thy help,' Deut.
xxxiii. 26 ; discharges his thunders upon men, and makes the influences of
it serve his people's interest. By one turn of a cock, as you see in grottoes,
he can cause streams from several parts of the heavens to refresh or ruin the
world.

6. Duration of it. The heavens are incorruptible, his throne is placed
there in an incorruptible state. Earthly empires have their decays and dis-
solutions. The throne of God outlives the dissolution of the world.

His kingdom rules over all. He hath an absolute right over all things
within the circuit of heaven and earth. Though his throne be in heaven,

406 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

as the place where his glory is most eminent and visible, his authority most
exactly obeyed, yet his kingdom extends itself to the lower parts of the
earth. He doth not muffle and cloud up himself in heaven, or confine his
sovereignty to that place ; his royal power extends to all visible as well as
invisible things, he is proprietor and possessor of all : Deut. x. 14, ' The
heaven, and the heaven of heavens, is the Lord's thy God, the earth also,
■with all that is there.' He hath right to dispose of ail as he pleases. He doth
not say his kingdom rules all that fear him, but ' over all ;' so that it is not
the kingdom of grace he here speaks of, but his natural and universal king-
dom. Over angels and men, Jews and Gentiles, animate and inanimate things.
The psalmist considers God here as a great monarch and general, and all
creatures as his hosts and regiments under him, and takes notice principally
of two things.

1. The establishment of his throne, together with the seat of it : ' He hath
prepared his throne in the heavens.'

2. The extent of his empire : ' His kingdom rules over all.'

This text, in all the parts of it, is a fit basis for a discourse upon the
dominion of God ; and the observation will be this,

Doct. God is sovereign Lord and King, and exerciseth a dominion over the
whole world, both heaven and earth.

This is so clear, that nothing is more spoken of in Scripture. The very
name Lord imports it; a name originally belonging to gods, and from them
translated to others. And he is frequently called ' the Lord of hosts,'
because all the troops and armies of spiritual and corporeal creatures
are in his hands and at his service. This is one of his principal titles,
and the angels are called ' his hosts,' verse 21, following the text, his
camp and militia. But more plainly, 1 Kings xxii. 19, God is presented
upon bis throne, encompassed with all the hosts of heaven standing on his
right band and on his left, which can be understood of no other than of the
angels that wait for the commands of their sovereign, and stand about, not
to counsel him, but to receive his orders. The sun, moon, and stars are
called his hosts, Deut. iv. 19, appointed by him for the government of in-
ferior things. He hath an absolute authority over the greatest and the least
creatures, over those that are most dreadful and those that are most bene-
ficial, over the good angels that willingly obey him, over the evil angels that
seem most incapable of government ; and as he is thus Lord of hosts, he is
the ' King of glory,' or a glorious king, Ps. xxiv. 10. You find him called ' a
great King,' the ' Most High,' Ps. xcii. 1, the supreme Monarch, there being
no dignity in heaven or earth but what is dim before him, and infinitely in-
ferior to him, yea, he hath the title of ' only king,' 1 Tim. vi. 15. The title
of royalty truly and properly only belongs to him. You may see it described
very magnificently by David at the free-will oflfering for the building of the
temple: 1 Chron. xxix. 11, 12, 'Thine, 0 Lord, is the greatness, and the
power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty : thine is the king-
dom, 0 God, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and hon-
our come of thee, and thou reignest over all ; and in thy hand is power and
might, and in thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength to all.' He
hath an eminency of power or authority above all. All earthly princes re-
ceived their diadems from him, yea, even those that will not acknowledge him,
and he hath a more absolute power over them than they can challenge over
their meanest vassals. As God hath a knowledge infinitely above our know-
ledge, so he hath a dominion incomprehensibly above any dominion of man,
and by all the shadows drawn from the authority of one man over another,
we can have but weak glimmerings of the authority and dominion of God.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 407

There is a threefold dominion of God :

1. Natural ; which is absolute over all creatures, and is founded in the
nature of God as Creator.

2. Spiritual or gracious, which is a dominion over his church as redeemed,
and founded in the covenant of grace.

3. A glorious kingdom at the winding up of all, wherein he shall reign
over all, either in the glory of his mercy, as over the glorified saints, or
in the glory of his justice in the condemned devils and men. The first
dominion is founded in nature ; the second, in grace ; the third, in regard
of the blessed, in grace, in regard of the damned, in demerit in them, and
justice in him.

He is Lord of all things, and always in regard of propriety : Ps. xxiv. 1,
* The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all that
dwell therein.' The earth, with the riches and treasures in the bowels of
it ; the habitable world, with everything that moves upon it, are his. He
hath the sole right, and what right soever any others have is derived from
him. In regard also of possession : Gen. xiv. 22, ' The most high God, pos-
sessor of heaven and earth ;' in respect of whom, man is not the proprietary
nor possessor, but usufructuary at the will of this grand Lord.

In the prosecution of this,

I. I shall lay down some general propositions for the clearing and con-
firming it.

II. I shall shew wherein this right of dominion is founded.

III. What the nature of it is.

IV. Wherein it consists, and how it is manifested.

I. Some general propositions for the clearing and confirming of it.

1. We must know the diflerence between the might and power of God
and his authority. W'e commonly mean by the power of God, the strength
of God, whereby he is able to effect all his purposes ; by the authority of God,
we mean the right he hath to act what he pleases. Omnipotence is his physi-
cal power, whei-eby he is able to do what he will ; dominion is his moral power,
whereby it is lawful for him to do what he will. Among men, strength and
authority are two distinct things. A subject may be a giant, and stronger
than his prince, but he hath not the same authority as his prince. Worldly
dominion may be seated, not in a brawny arm, but a sickly and infirm body,
as knowledge and wisdom are distinguished. Knowledge respects the mat-
ter, being, and nature of a thing ; wisdom respects the harmony, order, and
actual usefulness of a thing ; knowledge searcheth the nature of a thing, and
wisdom employs that thing to its proper use. A man may have much know-
ledge and little wisdom, so a man may have much strength, and little or no
authority. A greater strength may be settled in the servant, but a greater
authority resides in the master ; strength is the natural vigour of a man.
God hath an infinite strength, he hath a strength to bring to pass whatso-
ever he decrees ; he acts without fainting and weakness, Isa. xl. 28, and
impairs not his strength by the exercise of it. As God is Lord, he hath a
right to enact; as he is almighty, he hath a power to execute. His strength
is the executive power belonging to his dominion. In regard of his sove-
reignty, he huth a right to command all creatures ; in regard of his almighti-
ness, he hath power to make his commands be obeyed, or to punish men for
the violation of them. His power is that whereby he subdues all creatures
under him, his dominion is that whereby he hath a right to subdue all crea-
tures under him.

This dominion is a right of making what he pleases, of possessing what

408 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

lie made, of disposing of what he doth possess ; whereas his power is an
abiHty to make what he hath a right to create, to hold what he doth possess,
and to execute the manner wherein he resolves to dispose of his creatures.

2. All the other attributes of God refer to the perfection of dominion.
They all bespeak him fit for it, and are discovered in the exercise of it (which
hath been manifested in the discourses of those attributes we have passed
through hitherto). His goodness fits him for it, because he can never use
his authority but for the good of the creatures, and conducting them to their
true end. His wisdom can never be mistaken in the exercise of it, his power
can accomplish the decrees that flow from his absolute authority. What
can be more rightful than the placing authority in such an infinite goodness,
that hath bowels to pity as well as a sceptre to sway his subjects ! that
hath a mind to contrive, and a will to regulate his contrivances for his own
glory and his creatures' good, and an arm of power to bring to pass what he
orders. Without this dominion some perfections, as justice and mercy,
would lie in obscurity, and much of his wisdom would be shrouded from our
sight and knowledge.

3. This of dominion, as well as that of power, hath been acknowledged by
all. The high priest was to wave the ofi'ering, or shake it to and fro, Exod.
xxix, 24, which the Jews say was customarily from east to west, and from
north to south, the four quarters of the world, to signify God's sovereignty
over all the parts of the world ; and some of the heathens, in their adorations,
turned their bodies to all quarters, to signify the extensive dominion of God
throughout the whole earth. That dominion did of right pertain to the
Deity, was confessed by the heathen in the name of Baal, given to their
idols, which signifies Lord, and was not a name of one idol adored for a God,
but common to all the eastern idols. God hath interwoven the notion of his
sovereignty in the nature and constitution of man, in the noblest and most
inward acts of his soul, in that faculty which is most necessary for him in
his converse in this world, either with God or man. It is stamped upon the
conscience of man, and flashes in his face in every act of self -judgment con-
science passes upon a man. Every reflection of conscience implies an ob-
ligation of man to some law written in his heart, Rom. ii. 15. This law
cannot be without a legislator, nor this legislator without a sovereign
dominion ; these are but natural, and easy consequences in the mind of man
from every act of conscience. The indelible authority of conscience in man,
in the whole exercise of it, bears a respect to the sovereignty of God, clearly
proclaims, not only a supreme being, but a supreme governor, and points
man directly to it, that a man may as soon deny his having such a reflecting
principle within him, as deny God's dominion over him, and consequently
over the whole world of rational creatures.

4. This notion of sovereignty is inseparable from the notion of a God.
To acknowledge the existence of a God, and to acknowledge him a rewarder,
are linked together, Heb. xi. 6. To acknowledge him a rewarder, is to
acknowledge him a governor, rewards being the marks of dominion. The
very name of a God includes in it a supremacy, and an actual rule. He
cannot be conceived as God, but he must be considered as the highest
authority in the world. It is as possible for him not to be God, as not to
be supreme. Wherein can the exercise of his excellencies be apparent, but
in his sovereign rule ? To fancy an infinite power without a supreme domi-
nion, is to fancy a mighty senseless statue fit to be beheld, but not fit to be
obeyed, as not being able, or having no right, to give out orders, or not caring
for the exercise of it. God cannot be supposed to be the chief being, but
he must be supposed to give laws to all, and receive laws from none ; and if

Ps. cm. 19.j god's dominion. 409

•we suppose him -with a perfection of justice and righteousness (which we
must do, unless we would make a lame and imperfect God), we must sup-
pose him to have an entire dominion, without which he could never be able
to manifest his justice ; and without a supreme dominion, he could not mani-
fest the supremacy and infiniteness of his righteousness.

(1.) We cannot suppose God as creator, without supposing a sovereign
dominion in him. No creature can be made without some law in its nature ;
if it had not law, it would be created to no purpose, to no regular end. It
would be utterly unbecoming an infinite wisdom to create a lawless creature,
a creature wholly vain, much less can a rational creatm-e be made without a
law. If it had no law, it were not rational ; for, the very notion of a rational
creature implies reason to be a law to it, and implies an acting by rule.* K
you could suppose rational creatures without a law, you might suppose that
they might blaspheme their Creator and murder their fellow-creatures, and
commit the most abominable villanies destructive to human society without
sin ; for ' where there is no law, there is no transgi-ession.' But those things
are accounted sins by all mankind, and sins against the supreme being, so
that a dominion and the exercise of it is so fast linked to God, so entirely in
him, so intrinsic in his nature, that it cannot be imagined that a rational
creatm-e can be made by him without a stamp and mark of that dominion
in his very nature and frame, it is so inseparable from God in his very act
of creation.

(2.) It is such a dominion as cannot be renounced by God himself. It
is so intrinsic and connatural to him, so inlaid in the nature of God, that he
cannot strip himself of it, nor of the exercise of it, while any creature remains.
It is preserved by him, for it could not subsist of itself ; it is governed by
him, it could not else answer its end. It is impossible there can be a
creature which hath not God for its Lord. Christ himself, though in regard
of his Deity equal with God, yet in regard of his created state, and assuming
our nature, was God's servant, was governed by him in the whole of his
oflfice, acted according to his command and directions ; God calls him his
servant, Isa. xlii. 1. And Christ, in that prophetic psalm of him, cahs God
his Lord : Ps. xvi. 2, ' 0 my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art
my Lord.' It was impossible it should be otherwise. Justice had been so
far from being satisfied, that it had been highly incensed, if the order of
things in the due subjection to God had been broke, and his terms had not
been complied with. It would be a judgment upon the world, if God should
give up the government to any else, as it is when he gives ' childi'en to be
princes,' Isa. iii. 4, i. e. children in understanding.

(3.) It is so inseparable that it cannot be communicated to any creature.
No creature is able to exercise it, every creature is unable to perform all the
offices that belong to his dominion. No creature can impose laws upon the
consciences of men ; man knows not the inlets into the soul, his pen cannot
reach the inwards of man. What laws he hath power to propose to con-
science, he cannot see executed ; because every creature wants omniscience,
he is not able to perceive all those breaches of the law, which may be com-
mitted at the same time in so many cities, so many chambers. Or suppose
an angel, in regard of the height of his standing, and the insufficiency of
walls, and darkness, and distance to obstruct his view, can behold men's
actions, yet he cannot know the internal acts of men's minds and wills with-
out some outward eruption and appearance of them. And if he be ignorant
of them, how can he execute his laws ? If he only understand the outward
fact without the inward thought, how can he dispense a justice proportionable
♦ Maccov. CoUeg Theolog. x. Dieput. xviii. p. C, 7, or thereabout.

410 chahnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19,

to the crime ? He must needs be ignorant of that, which adds the greatest
aggravation sometimes to a sin, and inflict a lighter punishment upon that
which receives a deeper tincture from the inward posture of the mind, than
another fact may do, which in the outward act may appear more base and
unjust ; and so, while he intends righteousness, may act a degree of injustice.
Besides, no creature can inflict a due punishment for sin ;* that which is due
to sin, is a loss of the vision and sight of God ; but none can deprive any of
that but God himself; nor can a creature reward another with eternal life,
which consists in communion with God, which none but God can bestow.

II. Wherein the dominion of God is founded.

1. On the excellency of his nature. Indeed, a bare excellency of nature
bespeaks a fitness for government, but doth not properly convey a right of
government. Excellency speaks aptitude, not title ; a subject may have
more wisdom than the prince, and be fitter to hold the reins of government,
but he hath not a title to royalty. A man of large capacity, and strong
virtue, is fit to serve his country in parliament, but the election of the
people conveys a title to him. Yet a strain of intellectual and moral abilities
beyond others, is a foundation for dominion. And it is commonly seen that
such eminences in men, though they do not invest them with a civil autho-
rity, or an authority of jurisdiction, yet they create a veneration in the
minds of men ; their virtue attracts reverence, and their advice is regarded as
an oracle. Old men by their age, when stored with more wisdom and know-
ledge by reason of their long experience, acquire a kind of power over the
younger in the dictates and counsels, so that they gain by the strength of
that excellency a real authority in the minds of those men they converse
with, and possess themselves of a deep respect from them. God therefore,
being an incomprehensible ocean of all perfection, and possessing infinitely
all those virtues that may lay a claim to dominion, hath the first foundation
of it in his own nature. His incomparable and unparalleled excellency, as
well as the greatness of his work, attracts the voluntary vi'orship of him as a
sovereign Lord. Ps. Ixxxvi, 8, ' Among the gods there is none like unto
thee ; neither are there any works like unto thy work. All nations shall
come and worship before thee.' Though his benefits are great engagements
to our obedience and affection, yet his infinite majesty and perfection re-
quires the first place in our acknowledgment and adorations. Upon this
account God claims it : Isa. xlvi. 9, * I am God, and there is none like me ;
I will do all my pleasure.' And the prophet Jeremiah, upon the same account,
acknowledgeth it : chap. x. 6, 7, ' Forasmuch as there is none like unto
thee, 0 Lord ; thou art great, and thy name is great in might. Who would
not fear thee, 0 King of nations ? for to thee doth it appertain : forasmuch
as there is none like unto thee.' And this is a more noble title of dominion,
it being an uncreated title, and more eminent than that of creation or pre-
servation.f This is the natural order God hath placed in his creatures, that
the more excellent should rule the inferior. He committed not the govern-
ment of lower creatures to lions and tigers, that have a delight in blood,
but no knowledge of virtue ; but to man, who had an eminence in his nature
above other creatures, and was formed with a perfect rectitude, and a height
of reason to guide the reins over them. In man the soul, being of a more
sublime nature, is set of right to rule over the body; the mind, the most excel-
lent faculty of the soul, to rule over the other powers of it ; and wisdom, the
most excellent habit of the mind, to guide and regulate that in its determina-
tions ; and when the body and sensitive appetite control the soul and mind, it is
* Macovii Colleg Theolog. Disp. xviii. p. 12, 13. t Raynaud, Theolog. Nat. p. 757.

Ps, cm. 19.] god's DOsnNioN. 411

an usurpation against nature, not a rule according to nature ; the excellency
therefore of the divine nature is the natural foundation for his dominion.
He hath -wisdom to know what is fit for him to do, and an immutable right-
eousness whereby he cannot do anything base and unworthy. He hath a
foreknowledge whereby he is able to order all thiugs to answer his own
glorious designs, and the end of his government, that nothing can go awry,
nothing put him to a stand, and constrain him to meditate new counsels.
Bo that if it could be supposed, that the world had not been created by him,
that the parts of it had met together by chance, and been compacted into
such a body, none but God, the supreme and most excellent being in the
world, could have merited and deservedly challenged the government of it ;
because nothing had an excellency of nature to capacitate it for it as he hath,
or to enter into a contest with him for a sufficiency to govern.*

2. It is founded in his act of creation. He is the sovereign Lord, as he
is the almighty Creator. The relation of an entire Creator induceth the
relation of an absolute Lord ; he that gives being, life, motion, that is the
sole cause of the being of a thing which was before nothing, that had nothing
to concur with him, nothing to assist him, but by his sole power commands it
to stand up into being, is the unquestionable lord and proprietor of that
thing that hath no dependence but upon him. And by this act of creation,
which extended to all things, he became universal Sovereign over all things.
And those that waive the excellency of his nature as the foundation of his
government, easily acknowledge the sufficiency of it upon his actual crea-
tion. His dominion of jurisdiction results from creation. When God him-
self makes an oration in defence of his sovereignty. Job xxxviii., his chief
arguments are drawn from creation ; and Ps. xcv. 3, 5, 'The Lord is a great
King above all gods. The sea is his, and he made it.' And so the apostle
in his sermon to the Athenians. As he 'made the world, and all things
therein,' he is styled 'Lord of heaven and earth,' Acts xvii. 24. His
dominion also of property stands upon this basis : Ps. Ixxxix. 11, ' The hea-
vens are thine, the earth also is thine : as for the world and the fulness
thereof, thou hast founded them.' Upon this title of forming Israel as a
creature, or rather as a church, he demands their services to him as their
Sovereign. '0 Jacob and Israel, thou art my servant: I have formed thee;
thou art my servant, 0 Israel,' Isa. xliv. 21. The sovereignty of God natu-
rally ariseth from the relation of all things to himself as their entire creator,
and their natural and inseparable dependence upon him in regard of their
being and well-being. It depends not upon the election of men ; God hath
a natural dominion over us as creatures, before he hath a dominion by con-
sent over us as converts. As soon as ever anything began to be a creature,
it was a vassal to God as a lord. Every man is acknowledged to have a
right of possessing what he hath made, and a power of dominion over what
he hath framed. He may either cherish his own work or dash it in pieces;
he may either add a greater comeliness to it, or deface what he hath already
imparted. He hath a right of property in it; no other man can without
injury pilfer his own work from him. The work hath no propriety in itself,
the right must lie in the immediate framer, or in the person that employed
him. The first cause of everything hath an unquestionable dominion of
propriety in it upon the score of justice. By the law of nations, the first
finder of a country is esteemed the rightful possessor and lord of that coun-
try, and the first inventor of an art hath a right of exercising it. If a man
bath a just claim of dominion over that thing whose materials were not of
his framing, but from only the addition of a new figure from his skill, as a
* Camero. p. 871, Amyruld, Dissert, p. 72, 73.

412 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

limner over his picture, the cloth whereof he never made, nor the colours
wherewith he draws it were ever endued by him with their distinct qualities,
but only he applies them by his art to compose such a figure, much more
hath God a rightful claim of dominion over his creatures, whose entire being,
both in matter and form, and every particle of their excellency, was breathed
out by the word of his mouth. He did not only give the matter a form, but
bestowed upon the matter itself a being; it was formed by none to his hand,
as the matter is on which an artist works. He had the being of all things
in his own power, and it was at his choice whether he would impart it or
no ; there can be no juster and stronger ground of a claim than this. A
man hath a right to a piece of brass or gold by his purchase, but when by
his engraving he hath formed it into an excellent statue, there results an in-
crease of his right upon the account of his artifice. God's creation of the
matter of man gave him a right over man ; but his creation of him in so
eminent an excellency, with reason to guide him, a clear eye of understand-
ing to discern light from darkness, and truth from falsehood, a freedom of
will to act accordingly, and an original righteousness as the varnish and
beauty of all, here is the strongest foundation for a claim of authority over
man, and the strongest obligation on man for subjection to God. If all
those things had been passed over to God by another hand, he could not be
the supreme Lord, nor could have an absolute right to dispose of them at
his pleasure. That would have been the invasion of another's right. Be-
sides, creation is the only first discovery of his dominion. Before the world
was framed, there was nothing but God himself, and properly nothing is said
to have dominion over itself; this is a relative attribute, reflecting on the
works of God.* He had a right of dominion in his nature from eternity,
but before creation he was actually Lord only of a nullity. Where there is
nothing, it can have no relation ; nothing is not the subject of possession
nor of dominion. There could be no exercise of this dominion without
creation. What exercise can a sovereign have without subjects ? Sove-
reignty speaks a relation to subjects ; and none is properly a sovereign with-
out subjects. To conclude ; from hence doth result God's universal do-
minion ; for being maker of all, he is the ruler of all. And his jyerpetual
dominion ; for as long as God continues in the relation of Creator, the right
of his sovereignty as Creator cannot be abolished.

3, As God is the final cause or end of all, he is Lord of all. The end
hath a greater sovereignty in actions than the actor itself.f The actor
hath a sovereignty over others in action, but the end for which any one
works hath a sovereignty over the agent himself. A limner hath a sove-
reignty over the picture he is framing or hath framed, but the end for which
he framed it, either his profit he designed from it, or the honour and credit
of skill he aimed at in it, hath a dominion over the limner himself. The
end moves and excites the artist to work, it spirits him in it, conducts him
in his whole business, possesses his mind, and sits triumphant in him in
all the progress of his work ; it is the first cause for which the whole work
is wrought. Now God, in his actual creation of all, is the sovereign end of
all : 'For thy pleasure they are and were created,' Rev. iv. 11; 'The Lord
hath made all things for himself,' Prov. xvi. 4. Man indeed is the subordi-
nate and immediate end of the lower creation, and therefore had the do-
minion over other creatures granted to him ; but God being the ultimate and
principal end, hath the sovereign and principal dominion ; all things as much
refer to him as the last end, as they flow from him as the first cause. So

* Stoughton, Eighteous Man's Plea, Serm. vi. p. 28.
t Vid. Lessium de perfect, divin. p. 77, 78.

Ps, cm. 19.] god's dominion. 413

that, as I said before, if the world had been compacted together by a jum-
bling chance, without a wise hand, as some have foolishly imagined, none
could have been an antagonist with God for the government of the world,
but God, in regard of the excellency of his nature, would have been the
rector of it, unless those atoms that had composed the world had had an
abihty to govern it. Since there could be no universal end of all thint^s but
God, God only can claim an entire right to the government of it ; for though
man be the end of the lower creation, yet man is not the end of himself and
his own being, he is not the end of the creation of the supreme heavens, he
is not able to govern them, they are out of his ken, and out of his reach.
None fit in regard of the excellency of nature to be the chief end of the
whole world but God, and therefore none can have a right to the dominion
of it but God. In this regard, God's dominion differs from the dominion
of all earthly potentates. All the subjects in creation were made for God
as their end ; so are not people for rulers, but rulers made for people, for
their protection, and the preservation of order in societies.

4. The dominion of God is founded upon his preservation of things.
Ps. xcv. 3, 4, ' The Lord is a great King above all gods.' Vfhj? ' In his
hand are all the deep places of the earth.' While his hand holds things,
his hand hath a dominion over them. He that holds a stone in the air
exerciseth a dominion over its natural inclination in hindering it from falling.
The creature depends wholly upon God in its preservation ; as soon as that
divine hand which sustains everything were withdrawn, a languishment and
swooning would be the next turn in the creature. He is called Lord,
Adonoi, in regard of his sustentation of all things by his continual influx,
the word coming of n>i> which signifies a basis or pillar that supports a
building. God is the Lord of all, as he is the sustainer of all by his power,
as well as the creator of all by his word. The sun hath a sovereifTn do-
minion over its own beams, which depend upon it, so that if he withdraws
himself, they all attend him, and the world is left in darkness. God main-
tains the vigour of all things, conducts them in their operations, so that
nothing that they are, nothing that they have, but is owing to this preserv-
ing power. The Master of this great family may as well be called the Lord
of it, since every member of it depends upon him for the support of that
being he first gave them, and holds of his empire. As the right to govern
resulted from creation, so it is perpetuated by the preservation of things.

5. The dominion of God is strengthened by the innumerable benefits he
bestows upon his creatures. The benefits he confers upon us after creation
are not the original ground of his dominion. A man hath not authority
over his servant from the kindness he shews to him, but his authority com-
menceth before any act of kindness, and is founded upon a right of purchase,
conquest, or compact. Dominion doth not depend upon mere benefits ;
then inferiors might have dominion over superiors. A peasant may save
the life of a prince to whom he was not subject ; he hath not therefore a
right to step up into his throne and give laws to him. And children that
maintain their parents in their poverty might then acquire an authority over
them, which they can never climb to ; because the benefits they confer can-
not parallel the benefits they have received from the authors of their lives.
The bounties of God to us add nothing to the intrinsic right of his natural
dominion, they being the effects of that sovereignty, as he is a rewarder and
governor. As the benefits a prince bestows upon his favourite increases not
that right of authority, which is inherent in the crown, but strengthens that
dominion as it stands in relation to the receiver, by increasing the obligation
of the favourite to an observance of him, not only as his natural prince, but

414 chahnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

his gracious benefactor. The beneficence of God adds, though not an
criminal right of power, yet a foundation of a stronger upbraiding the crea-
ture if he walks in a violation and forgetfuluess of those benefits, .and pull
in pieces the links of that ingenuous duty they call for ; and an occasion of
exercising of justice in punishing the delinquent, which is a part of his
empire : Isa. i. 2, ' Hear, 0 heavens ; and give ear, 0 earth : the Lord
hath spoken, I have nourished children, and they have rebelled against me.'
Thus the fundamental right as creator is made more indisputable by his
relation as a benefactor, and more as being so afier a forfeiture of what was
enjoved by creation. The benefits of God are innumerable, and so magni-
ficent, that they cannot meet with any compensation from the creature ; and
therefore do necessarily require a submission from the creature, and an
acknowledgment of divine authority. But that benefit of redemption doth
add a stron^^er right of dominion to God, since he hath not only as a creator
given them being, and life as his creatures, but paid a price, the price of his
Son's blood, for their rescue from captivity, so that he hath a sovereignty
of grace as well as nature ; and the ransomed ones belong to him as
redeemer as well as creator : 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20, ' Ye are not your own, for
ye are bought with a price,' therefore your body and your spirits are God's.
JBy this he acquired a right of another kind, and brought us from that uncon-
trollable lordship we aftected over ourselves by the sin of Adam, that he might
use us as his own peculiar for his own glory and service ; by this redemp-
tion there results to God a right over our bodies, over our spirits, over our
services, as well as by creation ; and to shew the strength of this right the
apostle repeats it, ' you are bought,' — a purchase cannot be without a price
paid, — but he adds price also, * bought with a price.' To strengthen the
title, purchase gave him a new right ; and the greatness of the price estab-
lished that right. The more a man pays for a thing, the more usually
we say he deserves to have it, he hath paid enough for it. It was indeed
price enough, and too much for such vile creatures as we are.

III. The third thing is, the nature of this dominion.

1. This dominion is independent. His throne is in the heavens ; the
heavens depend not upon the earth, nor God upon his creatures. Since he
is independent in regard of his essence, he is so in his dominion, which flows
from the excellency and fulness of his essence. As he receives his essence
from none, so he derives his dominion from none ; all other dominion, except
paternal authority, is rooted originally in the wills of men. The first title
was the consent of the people, or the conquest of others by the help of those
people that first consented ; * and, in the exercise of it, earthly dominion
depends upon assistance of the subjects, and the members being joined with
the head carry on the work of government, and prevent civil dissensions ; in
the support of it, it depends upon the subjects' contributions and taxes.
The subjects in their strength are the arms, and in their purses the sinews
of government. But God depends upon none in the foundation of his govern-
ment ; he is not a Lord by the votes of his vassals. Nor is it successively
handed to him by any predecessor, nor constituted by the power of a superior;
nor forced he his way by war and conquest, nor precariously attained it by
suit or flattery, or bribing promises. He holds not the right of his empire
from anv other ; he hath no superior to hand him to his throne, and settle
him by commission. He is therefore called * King of kings, and Lord of
lords,' having none above him. ' A great King above all gods,' Ps. xcv. 3 ;
needinw no license from any when to act, nor direction how to act, or assist-
* Raynaud. Theolog. Natural, p. 760-762.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 415

ance in his action. He owes not any of those to any person ; he was not
ordered by any other to create, and therefore receives not orders from any
other to rule over what he hath created. He received not his power and
wisdom from another, and therefore is not subject to any for the rule of his
government. He only made his own subjects, and from himself hath the
sole authority ; his own will was the cause of their beings, and his own will
is the director of their actions. He is not determined by his creatures in
any of his motions, but determines the creatures in all. His actions are not
regulated by any law without him, but by a law within him, the law of his
own nature. It is impossible he can have any rule without himself, because
there is nothing superior to himself. Nor doth he depend upon any in the
exercise of his government ; he needs no servants in it ; when he uses crea-
tures, it is not out of want of their help, but for the manifestation of his
wisdom and power. What he doth by his subjects, he can do by himself:
' The government is upon his shoulder,' Isa. ix. 6, to shew that he needs not
any supporters. All other governments flow from him, all other authorities
depend upon him ; Dei rp-atid, or Dei provident id, is in the style of princes.
As their being is derived from his power, so their authority is but a branch
of his dominion. They are governors by divine providence ; God is gover-
nor by his sole nature. All motions depend upon the first heaven, which
moves all ; but that depends upon nothing. The government of Christ
depends upon God's uncreated dominion, and is by commission from him ;
Christ assumed not this honour to himself, ' but he that said unto him. Thou
art my Son,' bestowed it upon him. • He put all things under his feet,* but
not himself, 1 Cor. xv. 27. 'When he saith all things are put under him,
he is excepted which did put all things under him.' He sits still as an
independent governor upon his throne.

2. This dominion is absolute. If his throne be in the heavens, there is
nothing to control him. If he be independent, he must needs be absolute,
since he hath no cause in conjunction with him as Creator, that can share
with him in his right, or retain him in the disposal of his creature. His
authority is unlimited : in this regard the title of lord becomes not any but
God properly. Tiberius, thought none of the best, though one of the sub-
tilest princes, accounted the title of lord a reproach to him, since he was
not absolute.*

(1.) Absolute in regard of freedom and liberty.

[1.] Thus creation is a work of his mere sovereignty. He created because
it was his pleasure to create, Rev. iv. 11. He is not necessitated to do this
or that. He might have chosen whether he would have framed an earth,
and heavens, and laid the foundations of his chambers in the waters. He
was under no obligation to reduce things from nullity to existence.

[2.] Preservation is the fruit of his sovereignty. When he had called the
world to stand out, he might have ordered it to return into its dark den of noth-
ingness, ripped up every part of its foundation, or have given being to many
more creatures than he did. If you consider his absolute sovereignty, why
might he not have divested Adam presently of those rational perfections where-
with he had endowed him ; and might he not have metamorphosed him into
some beast, and elevated some beast into a rational nature ? Why might
he not have degraded an angel to a worm, and advanced a worm to the nature
and condition of an angel ? Why might he not have revoked that grant of
dominion, which he had passed to man over all creatures? It was free to
him to permit sin to enter into the earth, or to have excluded it out of the
earth, as he doth out of heaven.

* Sueton. de Tiberio, cap. xxvii.

416 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

[3.] Redemption is a fruit of his sovereignty. By his ahsolute sovereignty
he might have confirmed all the angels in their standing by grace, and
prevented the revolt of any of their members from him ; and when there was
a revolt both in heaven and earth, it was free to him to have called out his
Son, to assume the angelical, as well as the human nature, or have exercised
his dominion in the destruction of men and devils, rather than in the redemp-
tion of any ; he was under no obligation to restore either the one or the
other.

[4.] May he not impose what terms he pleases ? May he not impose what
laws he please, and exact what he will of his creature without promising any
rewards ? May he not use his own for his own honour, as well as men use
for their credit what they do possess by his indulgence ?

[5.] Affliction is an act of his sovereignty. By this right of sovereignty
may not God take away any man's goods, since they were his doles ? As
he was not indebted to us when he bestowed Ihem, so he cannot wrong us
when he removes them. He takes from us what is more his own than it is
ours, and was never ours but by his gift, and that for a time only, not for
ever. By this right he may determine our times, put a period to our days
when he pleases, strip us of one member, and lop off another. Man's being
was from him, and why should he not have a sovereignty to take what
he had a sovereignty to give ? Why should this seem strange to any of us,
since we ourselves exercise an absolute dominion over those things in our
possession which have sense and feeling, as well as over those that want it ?
Doth not every man think he hath an absolute authority over the utensils of
his house, over his horse, his dog, to preserve, or kill him, to do what he
pleases with him, without rendering any other reason than, It is my own ?
May not God do much more ? Doth not his dominion over the works of
his hands transcend that which a man can claim over his beast, that he never
gave life unto ? He that dares dispute against God's absolute right, fancies
himself as much a god as his Creator ; understands not the vast difference
between the divine nature and his own, between the sovereignty of God and
his own, which is all the theme God himself discourseth upon in those stately
chapters. Job xxxviii., xxxix., &c., not mentioning a word of Job's sin, but
only vindicating the rights of his own authority. Nor doth Job in his
reply, chap. xl. 4, speak of his sin, but of his natural vileness as a creature
in the presence of his Creator.

By this right God unstops the bottles of heaven in one place, and stops
them in another, causing it ' to rain upon one city and not upon another,'
Amos iv. 7 ; ordering the clouds to move to this or that quarter, where he
hath a mind to be a benefactor or a judge.

[6.] Unequal dispensations are acts of his sovereignty. By this right be
is patient toward those whose sins by the common voice of men deserve
speedy judgments, and pours out pain upon those that are patterns of virtue
to the world. By this he gives sometimes the worst of men an ocean of
wealth and honour to swim in, and reduceth an useful and exemplarj^ grace
to a scanty poverty. By this he rules the kingdoms of men, and sets a
crown upon the head of the basest of men, Dan. iv. 17, while he deposeth
another that seemed to deserve a weightier diadem. This is as he is the
Lord of the ammunition of his thunders, and the treasures of his bounty.

[7.] He may inflict what torments he pleases. Some say by this right of
sovereignty he may inflict what torments he pleaseth upon an innocent
person, which indeed will not bear the nature of a punishment as an effect
of justice, without the supposal of a crime, but a torment as an effect of
that sovereign right he hath over bis creature, which is as absolute over his

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 417

work, as the potter's power is over his own clay, Jer. xviii, 6, Rom. ix. 21.
May not the potter after his labour, either set his vessel up to adorn his
house, or knock it in pieces, and fling it upon the dunghill, separate it to
some noble use, or condemn it to some sordid service ?* Is the right of God
over his creatures less than that of the potter over his vessel, since God
contributed all to his creature, but the potter never made the clay, which is
the substance of the vessel, nor the water, which was necessary to make it
tractable, but only moulded the substance of it into such a shape ? The
vessel that is framed, and the potter that frames it, diifer only in life ; the
body of the potter, whereby he executes his authority, is of no better a mould
than the clay, the matter of his vessel ; shall he have no absolute power over
that which is so near him, and shall not God over that which is so infinitely
distant from him ? The vessel perhaps might plead for itself that it was
once part of the body of a man, and as good as the potter himself, whereas
no creature can plead it was part of God, and as good as God himself.
Though there be no man in the world but deserves affliction, yet the Scrip-
ture sometimes lays affliction upon the score of God's dominion, without
any respect to the sin of the afflicted person. James v. 15, speaking of a
sick person, * If he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him,' whereby
is implied, that he might be struck into sickness by God without any respect
to a particular sin, but in a way of trial, and that his affliction sprung not
from any exercise of divine justice, but from his absolute sovereignty. And
so in the case of the blind man, when the disciples asked for what sin it was,
whether for his own or his parents' sin he was born blind : John ix. 3,
' Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents,' which speaks in itself not
against the whole current of Scripture, but the words import thus much, that
God, in this blindness from the birth, neither respected any sin of the man's
own, nor of his parents, but he did it as an absolute sovereign to manifest
his own glory in that miraculous cure, which was wrought by Christ.
Though afflictions do not happen without the desert of the creature, yet some
afflictions may be sent without any particular respect to that desert, merely for
the manifestation of God's glory, since the creature was made for God him-
self, and his honour, and therefore may be used in a serviceableness to the
glory of the Creator.

(2.) His dominion is absolute in regard of unlimitedness by any law with-
out him. He is an absolute monarch that makes laws for his subjects, but
is not bound by any himself, nor receives any rules and laws from his sub-
jects for the management of his government. But most governments in the
workl are bounded by laws made by common consent. But when kings are
not limited by the laws of their kingdoms, yet they are bounded by the law of
nature, and by the providence of God. But God is under no "law without
himself; his rule is within him, the rectitude and righteousness of his own
nature ; he is not under that law he hath prescribed to man. ' The law was
not made for a righteous man,' 1 Tim. i. 9, much less for a righteous God.
God is his own law, his own nature is his rule ; as his own glory is his end,
himself is his end, and himself is his law. He is moved by nothing without
himself, nothing hath the dominion of a motive over him but his own will,
which is his rule for all his actions in heaven and earth : Dan. iv. 32, ' He
rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will ; ' and
Rom. ix. 18, ' He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy.' As all things
are wrought by him according to his own eternal ideas in his own mind,
so all is wrought by him according to the inward motive in his own will,
which was the manifestation of his own honour. The greatest motives
* Lessius, de Perfect. Divin, p- 66, 67
VOL. II. D d

418 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

therefore that the best persons have used, when they have pleaded for
any grant from God, was his own glory, which would be advanced by an
answer of their petition.

(3.) His dominion is absolute in regard of supremacy and uncontrollable-
ness. None can implead kim, and cause him to render a reason of his
actions. He is the sovereign king : ' Who may say unto him, What dost
thou ?' Eccles. viii. 4. It is an absurd thing for any to dispute with God.
Eom. ix. 20, * Who art thou, 0 man, that repliest against God?' Thou, a
man, a piece of dust, to argue with God incomprehensibly above thy reason,
about the reason of his works ! ' Let the potsherds strive with the pot-
sherds of the earth, but not with him that fashioned them,' Isa. xlv. 9.
In all the desolations he works, he asserts his supremacy to silence men.
Ps. xlvi. 10, ' Be still, and know that I am God.' Beware of any quarrelling
motions in your minds; it is sufficient that I am God, that is supreme, and
will not be impleaded, and censured or worded with by any creature
about what I do. He is not bound to render a reason of any of his pro-
ceedings. Subjects are accountable to their princes, and princes to God,
God to none ; since he is not limited by any superior, his prerogative is
supreme.

(4.) His dominion is absolute in regard of irresistibleness. Other govern-
ments are bounded by law, so that what a governor hath strength to do he
hath not a right to do. Other governors have a limited ability, that what
they have a right to do they have not always a strength to do, they may
want a power to execute their own counsels. But God is destitute of
neither ; he hath an infinite right, and an infinite strength ; his word is a
law, he commands things to stand out of nothing, and they do so. ' He
commanded,' or spake, 6 s/Vwi/, ' light to shine out of darkness,' 2 Cor. iv. 6.
There is no distance of time between his word, ' Let there be light, and
there was light,' Gen. i. 3. Magistrates often use not their authority, for
fear of giving occasion to insurrections, which may overturn their empire.
But if the Lord will work, * who shall let it ? ' Isa. xliii. 13. And if God
will not work, who shall force him ? He can check and overturn all other
powers, his decrees cannot be stopped, nor his hand held back by any ; if
he wills to dash the whole world in pieces, no creature can maintain its
being against his order. He sets * the ordinances of the heavens, and the
dominion thereof in the earth.' And ' sends lightnings, that they may go,
and say unto him, Here we are,' Job xxxviii. 33, 35.

3. Yet this dominion, though it be absolute, is not tyrannical ; but it is
managed by the rules of wisdom, righteousness, and goodness. If his throne
be in the heavens, it is pure and good, because the heavens are the purest
parts of the creation, and influence by their goodness the lower earth. Since
he is his own rule, and his nature is infinitely wise, holy, and righteous, he
cannot do a thing but what is unquestionably agreeable with wisdom, jus-
tice, and purity. In all the exercises of his sovereign right, he is never
unattended with those perfections of his nature. Might not God, by his
absolute power, have pardoned men's guilt, and thrown the invading sin out
of his creatures ? But in regard of his truth pawned in his threatening, and
in regard of his justice, which demanded satisfaction, he would not. Might
not God, by his absolute sovereignty, admit a man into his friendship with-
out giving him any grace ? But in regard of the incongruity of such an act
to his wisdom and holiness, he will not. May he not, by his absolute power,
refuse to accept a man that desires to please him, and reject a purely inno-
cent creature ? But in regard of his goodness and righteousness he will not.
Though innocence be amiable in its own nature, yet it is not necessary in

Ps. cm, 19.] god's dominion. 419

regard of God's sovereigaty that he should love it ; but in regard of his
goodness it is necessary, and he will never do otherwise. As God never
acts to the utmost of his power, so he never exerts the utmost of his
sovereignty ; because it wonld be inconsistent with those other properties
which render him perfectly adorable to the creature. As no intelligent crea-
ture, neither angel nor man, can be framed without a law in his nature, so we
cannot imagine God without a law in his own nature, unless we would fancy
him a rude, tyrannical, foolish being, that hath nothing of holiness, good-
ness, righteousness, wisdom. If he made the heavens in wisdom, Ps.
cxxxvi. 5, he made them by some rule, not by a mere will, but a rule within
himself, not without. A wise work is never the result of an absolute un-
guided will.

(1.) This dominion is managed by the rule of wisdom. What may appear
to us to have no other spring than absolute sovereignty, would be found to
have a depth of amazing wisdom and accountable reason, were our short
capacities long enough to fathom it. When the apostle had been discoursing
of the eternal counsels of God, in seizing upon one man and letting go
another, in rejecting the Jews and gathering in the Gentiles, which appears to
us to be the results only of an absolute dominion, yet he resolves not those
amazing acts into that, without taking it for granted that they were governed
by exact wisdom, though beyond bis ken to see, and his line to sound: Rom.
xi. 33, ' Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God ! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out !'
There are some things in matters of state that may seem to be acts of
mere will, but if we were acquainted with the arcana iinperii, the inward
engines which moved them, and the ends aimed at in those undertakings,
we might find a rich vein of prudence in them, to incline us to judge other-
wise than bare arbitrary proceedings. The other attributes of power and
goodness are more easily perceptible in the works of God than his wisdom.
The first view of the creation strikes us with this sentiment, that the author
of this great fabric was mighty and beneficial, but his wisdom lies deeper than
to be discerned at the first glance without a diligent inquiry; as at the first
casting our eyes upon the sea, we behold its motion, colour, and something
of its vastness, but we cannot presently fathom the depth of it, and under-
stand those lower fountains that supply that great ocean of waters. It is
part of God's sovereignty, as it is of the wisest princes, that he hath a wis-
dom beyond the reach of his subjects ; it is not for a finite nature to under-
stand an infinite wisdom, nor for a foolish creature that hath lost his
understanding by the fall, to judge of the reason of the methods of a wise
counsellor. Yet those actions that savour most of sovereignty present men
with some glances of his wisdom. Was it mere will that he sufiered some
angels to fall ? But his wisdom was in it for the manifestation of his jus-
tice, as it was also in the case of Pharaoh. Was it mere will that he
suffered sin to be committed by man ? Was not his wisdom in this for the
discovery of his mercy, which never had been known without that which
should render a creature miserable ? Piom. xi. 32, ' He hath concluded them
all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.' Though God had such an
absolute right to have annihilated the world, as soon as ever he had made it,
yet how had this consisted with his wisdom, to have erected a creature after
bis own image one day, and despised it so much the next, as to cashier it
from being ? What wisdom had it been to make a thing only to destroy it ?
to repent of his work as soon as ever it came out of his hands, without any
occasion off"ered by the creature ? If God be supposed to be creator, he
must be supposed to have an end in creation ; what end can that be but

420 chaenock's wokks. [Ps. CIII. 19.

himself and liis own glory, the manifestation of the perfection of his
nature ? "^Tiat perfection could have been discovered in so quick an anni-
hilation, but that of his power in creating, and of his sovereignty in snatch-
ing away the being of his rational creature, before it had laid the methods
of acting ? What wisdom to make a world and a reasonable creature for
no use ? not to praise and honour him, but to be broken in pieces, and
destroyed by him ?

(2.) His sovereignty is managed according to the rule of righteousness.
"Worldly princes often fancy tyranny and oppression to be the chief mark's of
sovereignty, and think their sceptres not beautiful till dyed in blood, nor the
throne secure till estabUshed upon slain carcases. But 'justice and judg-
ment are the foundation of the throne ' of God, Ps. Ixix. 14, alluding per-
haps to the supporters of arms and thrones, which among princes are the
figures of lions, emblems of courage, as Solomon had, 1 Kings x. 19. But
God makes not so much might as right the support of his. He sits on a
' throne of hoUness,' Ps. xlvii. 8, as he reigns over the heathens, referring to
the calling of the Gentiles after the rejecting the Jews ; the psalmist here
praising the righteousness of it, as the apostle had the unsearchable wisdom
of it, Piom. si. 33. ' In all his ways he is righteous,' Ps. cxlv. 17 ; in his
ways of teiTor, as well as those of sweetness, in those works wherein little
else but that of his sovereignty appears to us. It is always linked with his
holiness, that he will not do by his absolute right any thing but what is con-
formable to it. Since his dominion is founded upon the excellency of his
natui-e, he will not do anything but what is agi-eeable to it, and becoming
his other perfections. Though he be an absolute sovereign, he is not an
arbitrary^ governor : ' Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?' Gen.
xviii. 25, /. e. it is impossible but he should act righteously in exerj jninctilio
of his government, since his righteousness capacitates him to be a judge, not
a tyrant, of all the earth. The heathen poets represented their chief god,
Jupiter, with Themis, or Plight, sitting by him upon his throne in all his
orders. God cannot by his absolute sovereignty command some things, be-
cause they are directly against unchangeable righteousness ; as to command
a creature to hate, or blaspheme the Creator, not to own him, nor praise
him. It would be a manifest unrighteousness to order the creature not to
own him, upon whom he depends both in its being and well-being. This would
be against that natural duty which is indispensably due from every rational
creature to God. This would be to order him to lay aside his reason while
he retains it, to disown him to be the Creator while man remains his crea-
ture. This is repugnant to the nature of God, and the true nature of the
creature ; or to exact anything of man but what he had given him a capacity,
in his original nature, to perform. If any command were above our natural
power, it would be unrighteous, as to command a man to grasp the globe of
the earth, to stride over the sea, to lave out the waters of the ocean, these
things are impossible, and become not the righteousness and wisdom of
God to enjoin. There can be no obligation on man to an impossibility.
God had a free dominion over nullity before the creation, he could call it out
into the being of man and beast : but he could not do anything in creation
foolishly, because of his infinite wisdom, nor could he by the right of his
absolute sovereignty make man sinful, because of his infinite purity. As it
is impossible for him not to be sovereign, it is impossible for him to deny
his deity and his purity. It is lawful for God to do what he will, but his
will being ordered by the righteousness of his nature, as infinite as his will,
he cannot do anything but what is just ; and therefore, in his dealing with
men, you find him in Scripture submitting the reasonableness and equity ^of

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 421

his proceedings to the judgment of his depraved creatures, and the inward
dictates of their own consciences. Isa. v. 3, ' And now, 0 inhabitants of
Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my vine-
yard.' Though God be the great sovereign of the world, yet he acts not in
a way of absolute sovereignty.

He rules by law : he is a lawgiver as well as a king, Isa. xxxiii. 22. It
had been repugnant to the nature of a rational creature to be ruled other-
wise ; to be governed as a beast, this had been to frustrate those faculties of
will and understanding which had been given him. To conclude this ; when
we say, God can* do this or that, or command this or that, his authority is
not bounded and limited properly. Who can reasonably detract from his
almightiness, because he cannot do anything which savom-s of weakness ; and
what detracting is it fi'om his authority that he cannot do anything unseemly
for the dignity of his nature ! It is rather from the infiniteness of his right-
eousness than the straitness of his authority ; at most, it is but a voluntary
bounding his dominion by the law of his own holiness.

(3.) His sovereignty is managed according to the rule of goodness. Some
potentates there have been in the world, that have loved to suck the blood
and drink the tears of their subjects, that would rule more by fear than love,t
Hke Clearchas, the tyrant of Heraclia, who bore the figure of a thunderbolt
instead of a sceptre, and named his son Thunder, thereby to tutor him to terrify
his subjects. But as God's throne is a throne of holiness, so it is a ' throne
of grace,' Heb. iv. 16 ; a throne encircled with a rainbow ; Bev. iv. 23, *in
sight like to an emerald ' — an emblem of the covenant, that hath the pleasant-
ness of a green colour, delightful to the eye, betokening mercy. Though his
nature be infinitely excellent above us, and his power infinitely transcendent
over us, yet the majesty of his government is tempered with an unspeakable
goodness. He acts not so much as an absolute Lord, as a gi-acious sovereign
and obliging benefactor. He delights not to make his subjects slaves, ex-
acts not of them any servile and fearful, but a generous and cheerful, obedience.
He requires them not to fear or worship him so much for his power as his
goodness. He requires not of a rational creature any thing repugnant to the
honour, dignity, and principles of such a nature ; not any thing that may
shame, disgrace it, and make it weary of its own being, and the service it
owes to its sovereign. He draws by the cords of a man ; his goodness ren-
ders his laws as sweet as honey or the honeycomb to an unvitiated palate
and a renewed mind. And though it be granted he hath a full dispose of
his creature, as the potter of his vessel, and might by his absolute sovereignty
inflict upon an innocent an eternal torment, yet his goodness will never per-
mit him to use this sovereign right to the hurt of a creature that deserves it
not. If God should cast an innocent creature into the furnace of his wrath,
who can question him ? But who can think that his goodness will do so,
since that is as infinite as his authority ? As not to punish the sinner would
be a denial of his justice, so to torment an innocent would be a denial of his
goodness. A man hath an absolute power over his beast, and may take
away his life, and put him to a great deal of pain ; but that moral virtue^of
pity and tenderness would not permit him to use this right, but when it con-
duceth to some greater good than that can be evil : either for the good of
man, which is the end of the creature, or for the good of the poor beast it-
self, to rid him of a greater misery. None but a savage nature, a disposition
to be abhorred, would torture a poor beast merely for his pleasure. It is as
much against the nature of God to punish one eternally that hath not de-
served it, as it is to deny himself, and act any thing foolishly, and unbe-
* Qu, ' cannot'? — Ed. f Causin. Poly. Histor. lib. iv. cap. xxii.

422 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

seeming his other perfections, which render him majestical and adorable.
To afflict an innocent creature for his own good, or for the good of the world,
as in the case of the Redeemer, is so far from being against goodness, that it
is the highest testimony of his tender bowels to the sons of men. God,
though he be mighty, ' withdraws not his eyes,' i. e. his tender respect, 'from
the righteous,' Job xxxvi. 5, 7-10. And if he ' bind them in fetters,' it is
to * shew them their transgressions,' and * open their ear to discipline,' and
renewing commands in a more sensible strain, ' to depart from iniquity.'
What was said of Fabricius, You may as soon remove the sun from its course
as Fabricius from his honesty, may be [saidj of God, You may as soon dash
in pieces his throne, as separate his goodness from his sovereignty.

4. Proposition. This sovereignty is extensive over all creatures. He rules
all, as the heavens do over the earth. He is king of worlds, king of ages,
as the word translated eternal signifies, 1 Tim. i. 17, rp di (Saai'/.i? rZv aiuvcov.
And the same word is translated, Heb. i. 2, ' By whom also he made the
worlds,' the same word is rendered tcorlds, Heb. xi. 3, ' The worlds were
framed by the word of God.' God is king of ages or worlds, of the invisible
world and the sensible, of all from the beginning of their creation, of what-
soever is measured by a time. It extends over angels and devils, over wicked
and good, over rational and irrational creatures ; all things bow down under
his hand, nothing can be exempted from him, because there is nothing but
was extracted by him from nothing into being. All things essentially depend
upon him, and therefore must be essentially subject to him ; the extent of
his dominion flows from the perfection of his essence ; since his essence is
unlimited, his royalty cannot be restrained. His authority is as void of any
imperfection as his essence is, it reaches out to all points of the heaven above
and the earth below. Other princes reign in a spot of ground. Every
worldly potentate hath the confines of his dominion. The Pyrenean moun-
tains divide France from Spain, and the Alps Italy from France. None are
called kings absolutely, but kings of this or that place. Bat God is the King,
the spacious firmament limits not his dominion. If we could suppose him
bounded by any place in regard of his presence, yet he could never be out of
his own dominion ; whatsoever he looks upon, wheresoever he were, would
be under his rule. Earthly kings may step out of their own country into
the territory of a neighbour prince, and as one leaves his country so he leaves
his dominion behind him ; but heaven and earth, and eveiy particle of both,
is the territory of God. * He hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and
his kingdom rules over all.'

(1.) The heaven of angels and other excellent creatures belong to his
authority. He is principally called the ' Lord of hosts,' in relation to his
entire command over the angelical legions. Therefore, verse 21, following
the text, they are called his * hosts and ministers that do his pleasure.'
Jacob called him so before, Gen. xxxii. 1, 2. When he met the angels of
God, he calls them ' the hosts of God,' and the evangelist long after calls
them so : Luke ii. 13, ' A multitude of the heavenly host praising God ;' and
all this host he commands : Isa. xlv. 12, ' My hands have stretched out the
heavens, and all their host have I commanded.' He employs them in his ser-
vice, and when he issues out his orders to them, to do this or that, he finds
no resistance of his will.

And the inanimate creatures in heaven are at his beck, they are his armies
in heaven, disposed in an excellent order in their several ranks : Ps. cxlvii.
4, ' He calls the stars by name,' they render a due obedience to him, as ser-
vants to their master. When he singles them out, and calls them by name
to do some special service, he calls them cut to their several offices, as the

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 423

general of an army appoints the station of every regiment in a battalion ; or
' he calls them by name,' i. e. he imposeth names upon them, a sign of
dominion, the giving names to the inferior creatures being the first act of
Adam's derivative dominion over them. These are under the sovereignty
of God. The stars by their influences fight against Sisera, Judges v. 20 ;
and the sun holds in its reins, and stands stone still to light Joshua to a
complete victory. Josh. x. 12. They are all marshalled in their ranks to
receive his word of command, and fight in close order, as bemg desirous to
have a share in the ruin of the enemies of their sovereign ; and those crea-
tures which mount up from the earth, and take their place in the lower
heavens, vapours, whereof hail and snow are formed, are part of the army,
and do not only receive but fulfil his word of command, Ps. cxlviii. 8.
These are his stores and magazines of judgment against a time of trouble,
and ' a day of battle and war,' Job xxxviii. 22, 23. The sovereignty of God
is visible in all their motions, in going and returning. If he says, Go, they
go ; if he say. Come, they come ; if he say, Do this, they gird up theii- loins,
and stand stiff to their duty.

(2.) The hell of devils belong to his authority. They have cast them-
selves out of the arms of his grace into the furnace of his justice ; they have
by their revolt forfeited the treasure of his goodness, but cannot exempt
themselves from the sceptre of his dominion. "When they would not own him
as a Lord Father, they are under him as Lord Judge ; they are cast out of
his aflection, but not freed from his yoke. He rules over the good angels
as his sul jects, over the evil ones as his rebels. In whatsoever relation he
stands, either as a friend or enemy, he never loses that of a Lord. A prince
is the lord of his criminals, as well as of his loyalest subjects. By this right
of his sovereignty, he uses them to punish some, and be the occasion of benefit
to others : on the wicked he employs them as instruments of vengeance ; to-
wards the godly, as in the case of Job, as an instrument of kindness for the
manifestation of his sincerity against the intentions of that mahcious execu-
tioner. Though the devils are the executioners of his justice, it is not by
their own authority, but God's ; as those that are employed either to rack
or execute a malefactor, are subjects to the prince, not only in the quahty
of men, but in the execution of their function. The devil, by drawing men to
sin, acquires no right to himself over the sinner ; for man by sin ofl'ends not
the devil, but God, and becomes guilty of punishment under God.* "SN'hen,
therefore, the devil is used by God for the punishment of any, it is an act of
his sovereignty, for the manifestation of the order of his justice ; and as most
nations use the vilest persons in offices for execution, so doth God those vUe
spirits. He doth not ordinarily use the good angels in those offices of ven-
geance, but in the preservation of his people. When he would solely punish,
he employs evil angels, Ps. Ixxviii. 49, a troop of devils. His sovereignty is
extended over the ' deceiver and the deceived,' Job xii. 16, over both the
malefactor and the executioner, the devil and his prisoner. He useth the
natural malice of the devils for his own just ends, and by his sovereign
authority orders them to be the executioners of his judgments upon their
own vassals, as well as sometimes inflicters of punishments upon his own
servants.

(3.) The earth, of men and other creatures, belong to his authority, Ps.
xlvii. 7. God is King ' of all the earth,' and rules to the ends of it, Ps.
lix. 13. Ancient atheists confined God's dominion to the heavenly orbs,
and bounded it within the circuit of the celestial sphere : Job xxii. 14, ' He
walks in the circuit of heaven,' i. e. he exercipeth his dominion only there.
* Suarez. vol. ii. lib. viii. cap. xx. p. 736.

424 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

Pedum positio was the sign of the possession of a piece of land, and the
dominion of the possessor of it, and land was resigned by such a ceremony,
as now by the delivery of a twig or turf.*

But his dominion extends,

[l.j Over the least creatures. All the creatures of the earth are listed in
Christ's muster-roll, and make up the number of his regiments. He hath a
host on earth as well as in heaven : Gen. ii. 1, ' The heavens and the earth
were finished, and all the host of them ;' and they are ' all his servants,' Ps.
cxix, 91, and move at his pleasure. And he vouchsafes the title of his army
to the locust, caterpillar, and palmer-worm, Joel ii. 25, and describes their
motions by military words, * climbing the walls,' ' marching,' not ' breaking
their ranks,' verse 7. He hath the command as a great general over the
highest angel, and the meanest worm ; all the kinds of the smallest insects
he presseth for his service. By this sovereignty he muzzled the devouring
nature of the fire, to presei-ve the three children, and let it loose to consume
their adversaries ; and if he speak the word, the stormy waves are hush, as
if they had no principle of rage within them, Ps. Ixxxix. 9. Since the
meanest creature attains its end, and no arrow that God hath by his power
shot into the world, but hits the mark he aimed at, we must conclude that
there is a sovereign hand governs all. Not a spot of earth, or air, or water,
in the world, but is his possession ; not a creature in any element, but is his
subject.

[2.] His dominion extends over men. It extends over the highest poten-
tate as well as the meanest peasant; the proudest monarch is no more exempt
than the most languishing beggar. He lays not aside his authority to please
the prince, nor strains it up to terrify the indigent : ' He accepts not the
persons of princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor : for they are all
the work of his hands,' Job xxxiv. 19. Both the powers and weaknesses,
the gallantry and peasantry, of the earth, stand and fall at his pleasure. Man
in innocence was under his authority as his creature, and man in his revolt
is further under his authority as a criminal ; as a person is under the
authority of a prince as a governor, while he obeys his laws, and further
under the authority of the prince as a judge, when he violates his laws. Man
is under God's dominion in every thing, in his settlement, in his calling, in
the ordering his very habitation : Acts xvii. 26, ' He determines the bounds
of their habitations.' He never yet permitted any to be universal monarch
in the world, nor over the fourth part of it, though several, in the pride
of their heart, have designed and attempted it. The pope, who hath bid
the fgirest for it in spirituals, never attained it ; and when his power was
most flourishing, there were multitudes that would never acknowledge his
authority.

[3.] But especially this dominion, in the peculiarity of its extent, is seen
in the exercise of it over the spirits and hearts of men. Earthly governors
have by his indulgence a share with him in a dominion over men's bodies,
upon which account he graceth princes and judges with the title of gods, Ps.
Ixxxii. 6 ; but the highest prince is but a prince * according to the flesh,' as
the apostle calls masters in relation to their servants. Col. iii. 22.

God is the sovereign ; man rules over the beast in man, the body ; and
God rules over the man in man, the soul. It sticks not in the outward sur-
face, but pierceth to the inward marrow. It is impossible God should be
without this ; if our wills were independent on him, we were in some sort
equal with himself, in part gods as well as creatures. It is impossible a crea-

* Boldu. 171 he.

Ps. cm. 19.j god's dominion. 425

tare, either in whole or in part, can be exempted from it, since he is the
fashioner of hearts as well as of bodies. He is the Father of spirits, and
therefore hath the right of a paternal dominion over them. "When he estab-
lished man lord of the other creatures, he did not strip himself of the pro-
priety ; and when he made man a free agent, and lord of the acts of his will,
he did not divest himself of the sovereignty.

His sovereignty is seen,

(1.) In gifting of the spirits of men. Earthly magistrates have hands too
short, to inspire the hearts of their subjects with worthy sentiments. When
they confer an employment, they are not able to convey an ability with it
fit for the station. They may as soon frame a statue of hquid water, and
gild or paint it over with the costliest colours, as impart to any a state head
for a state ministry. But when God chooseth a Saul from so mean an em-
ployment as seeking of asses, he can treasure up in him a spirit fit for govern-
ment ; and fii-e David, in age a striphng, and by education a shepherd, with
courage to encounter and skill to defeat a massy Goliah ; and when he designs
a person for glory to stand before his throne, he can put a new and a royal
spirit into him, Ezek. xxxvi. 26. God only can infuse habits into the soul,
to capacitate it to act nobly and generously.

(2.) His sovereignty is seen in regard of the inclinations of men's wills.
No creature can immediately work upon the will, to guide it to what point
he pleaseth, though mediately it may, by proposing reasons which may
master the understanding, and thereby determine the will ; but God bows
the hearts of men by the efficacy of his dominion to what centre he pleaseth.
"When the more over-weening sort of men, that thought their own heads as
fit for a crown as Saul's, scornfully despised him, yet God touched the hearts
of a band of men, to follow and adhere to him, 1 Sam. x. 26, 27. When
the antichristian whore shall be ripe for destruction, God shall ' put it into
the heart ' of the ten horns or kings ' to hate the whore, bum her with fire,
and fulfil his will,' Rev. xvii. 16, 17. He ' fashions the hearts alike,' and
tunes one string to answer another, and both to answer his own design, Ps.
xxxiii. 15. And while men seem to gratify their own ambition and malice,
they execute the will of God by his secret touch upon their spirits, guiding
their inclinations to serve the glorious manifestation of his truth. While
the Jews would, in a reproachful disgrace to Christ, crucify two thieves with
him, to render him more uncapable to have any followers, they accomplished
a propliecy, and brought to light a mark of the Messiah, whereby he had
been charactered in one of their prophets, Isa. liii. 12, that he should be
• numbered among transgressors.' He can make a man of not willing wil-
ling ; the wills of all men are in his hand, i. e. under the power of his sceptre,
to retain or let go upon this or that errand, to bend this or that way, as
water is carried by pipes to what house or place the owner of it is pleased to
order : Prov. xxi. 1, ' The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord ; as the
rivers of waters, he turns it whithersoever he will,' without any limitation.
He speaks of the heart of princes, because, in regard of their height, they
seem to be more absolute and impetuous, as waters ; yet God holds them in
his hand, under his dominion, turns them to acts of clemency or severity like
waters, either to overflow and damage, or to refresh and fructify. He can
convey a spirit to them, or cut it ofi' from them, Ps. Ixxvi. 12. It is with
reference to his efficacious power, in graciously turning the heart of Paul,
that the apostle breaks oflf his discourse of the story of his conversion, and
breaks out into a magnifying and glorifying of God's dominion : 1 Tim. i. 17,
' Now unto the King eternal, &c., be honour and glory for ever and ever.' Our
hearts are^more subject to the divine sovereignty than our members in their

426 chaknock's works. [Ps. GUI. 19.

motions are subject to our own wills. As we can move our hand east or west
to any quarter of the world, so can God bend our wills to what mark he pleases.
The second cause in every motion depends upon the first, and that will being
a second cause, may be furthered or hindered in its inclinations or execu-
tions by God ; he can bend or unbend it, and change it from one actual
inclination to another. It is as much under his authority and power to
move or hinder, as the vast engine of the heavens is in its motion or stand-
ing still, which he can efiect by a word. The work depends upon the work-
man, the clock upon the artificer, for the motions of it.

(3.) His dominion is seen in regard of terror or comfort. The heart or
conscience is God's special throne on earth, which he hath reserved to him-
self, and never indulged human authority to sit upon it. He solely orders
this in ways of conviction or comfort. He can flash terror into men's spirits
in the midst of their earthly jollities, and put death into the pot of conscience,
when they are boiling up themselves in a high pitch of worldly delights ; and
can raise men's spirits above the sense of torment under racks and flames.
He can draw a handwriting, not only in the outward chamber, but the inward
closet, bring the rack into the inwards of a man. None can infuse comfort
when he writes bitter things, nor can any fill the heart with gall when he
drops in honey. Men may order outward duties, but they cannot unlock
the conscience, and constrain men to think them duties, which they are
forced by human laws outwardly to act. And as the laws of earthly princes
are bounded by the outward man, so do their executions and punishments
reach no further than the case of the body. But God can run upon the
inward man as a giant, and inflict wounds and gashes there.

5. Proposition. It is an eternal dominion. In regard of the exercise of
it, it was not from eternity, because there was not from eternity any creature
under the government of it ; but in regard of the foundation of it, his essence,
his excellency, it is eternal; as God was from eternity almighty, but there
Avas no exercise or manifestation of it till he began to create. Men are
kings only for a time, their lives expire like a lamp, and their dominion is
extinguished with their lives ; they hand their empire by succession to
others, but many times it is snapped ofl' before they are cold in their graves.
How are the famous empires of the Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, and Greeks
mouldered away, and their place knows them no more ! And how are the
wings of the Roman eagle cut, and that empire which overspread a great
part of the world hath lost most of its feathers, and is confined to a narrower
compass ! The dominion of God flourisheth from one generation to another.
* He sits King forever,' Ps. xxix. 10 ; his session signifies the establishment,
and /or ever the duration, and he sits now; his sovereignty is as absolute, as
powerful as ever. How many lords and princes hath this or that kingdom
had ? in how many families hath the sceptre lodged ? whenas God hath
had an uninterrupted dominion. As he hath been always the same in his
essence, he hath been always glorious in his sovereignty. Among men, he
that is lord to-day maybe stripped of it to-morrow. The dominions in the
world vary : he that is a prince may see his royalty upon the wings, and feel
himself laden with fetters ; and a prisoner may be ' lifted from his dungeon'
to a throne. But there can be no diminution of God's government : ' His
throne is from generation to generation,' Lament, v, 19 ; it cannot be
shaken. His sceptre, like Aaron's rod, is always green ; it cannot be
wrested out of his hands ; none raised him to it, none therefore can depose
him from it ; it bears the same splendour in all human afi'airs ; he is an
eternal, an immortal King, 1 Tim, i, 17. As he is eternally mighty, so he is
eternally sovereign ; and being an eteri:al king, he is a king that gives not a

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 427

momentary and perishing, but a durable and everlasting, life to them that
obey him ; a durable and eternal punishment to them that resist him.

IV. Wherein this dominion and sovereignty consists, and how it is
manifested.

1 . The £rst act of sovereignty is the making laws. This is essential to
God ; no creature's will can be the first rule to the creature, but only the
will of God. He can only prescribe man his duty, and establish the rule of
it ; hence the law is called, ' the royal law,' James ii. 8, it Ijeing the
first and clearest manifestation of sovereignty, as the power of legislation is
of the authority of a prince. Both are joined together in Isa. xxxiii. 22,
* The Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king,' legislative power being
the great mark of royalty. God as a king enacts laws by his o^Yn proper
authority, and his law is a declaration of his own sovereignty, and of men's
moral subjection to him and dependence on him. His sovereignty doth not
appear so much in his promises as in his precepts.* A man's power over
another is not discovered by promising, for a promise doth not suppose the
promiser either superior or inferior to the person to whom the promise is
made ; it is not an exercising authority over another, but over a man's self.
No man forceth another to the acceptance of his promise, but only proposeth
and encourageth to an embracing of it. But commanding supposeth always
an authority in the person giving the precept ; it obligeth the person to
whom the command is directed ; a promise obligeth the person by whom the
promise is made. God by his command binds the creature, by his promise
he binds himself. He stoops below his sovereignty, to lay obligations upon
his own mnjesty ; by a precept he binds the creature, by a promise he
encourageth the creature to an observance of his precept. What laws God
makes, man is bound by virtue of his creation to observe ; that respects the
sovereignty of God. What promises God makes, man is bound to beheve ;
but that respects the faithfulness of God. God manifested his dominion
more to the Jews than to any other people in the world ; he was their law-
giver, both as they were a church and a commonwealth. As a church, he
gave them ceremonial laws, for the regulating their worship ; as a state, he
gave them judicial laws, for the ordering their civil aflairs ; and as both, he
gave them moral laws, upon which both the laws of the church and state
were founded.

This dominion of God in this regard will be manifest,

(1.) In the supremacy of it. The sole power of making laws doth origi-
nally reside in him : James iv. 12, ' There is one Lawgiver, who is able to
save and to destroy.' By his own law he judges of the eternal states of
men, and no law of man is obligatory, but as it is agreeable to the laws of
this supreme Lawgiver, and pursuant to his righteous rules for the govern-
ment of the world. The power that the potentates of the world have to
make laws, is but derivative from God. If their dominion be from him, as
it is, for ' by him kings reign,' Prov. viii. 15, their legislative power,
which is a prime flower of their sovereignty, is derived from him also. And
the apostle resolves it into this original, when he orders us to be * subject
to the higher powers, not only for wrath, but for conscience' sake,' Rom.
xiii, 5. Conscience, in its operations, solely respects God ; and therefore,
when it is exercised as the principle of obedience to the laws of men, it is not
with a respect to them singly considered, but as the majesty of God appears
in their station and in their decrees. The power of giving laws vias acknow-
ledged by the heathen to be solely in God by way of original ; and therefore
* Suarez. de Legib. p. 23.

428 charnock's works. [Ps, CIII. 19.

the greatest lawgivers among the heathen pretended their laws to be received
from some deity, or supernatural power, by special revelation. Now, whether
they did this seriously, acknowledging themselves this part of the dominion
of God (for it is certain, that whatsoever just orders were issued out by
princes in the world, was by the secret influence of God upon their spirits :
Prov. viii. 15, 'By me princes decree justice,' by the secret conduct of
divine wisdom), or whether they pretended it only as a public engine, to
enforce upon people the observance of their decrees, and gain a greater
credit to their edicts, yet this will result from it, that the people in general
entertained this common notion, that God was the great lawgiver of the
world. The first founders of their societies could never else have so abso-
lutely gained upon them by such a pretence. There was always a revelation
of a law from the mouth of God in every age. The exhortation of Eliphaz
to Job, chap. xxii. 22, of receiving a law from the mouth of God, at the
time before the moral law was published, had been a vain exhortation had
there been no revelation of the mind of God in all ages.

(2.) The dominion of God is manifest in the extent of his laws. As he
is the governor and sovereign of the whole world, so he enacts laws for the
whole world. One prince cannot make laws for another, unless he makes
him his subject by right of conquest. Spain cannot make laws for England,
or England for Spain. But God having the supreme government, as king
over all, is a lawgiver to all, to irrational as well as rational creatures : the
* heavens have their ordinances,' Job xxxviii. 33. All creatures have a law
imprinted on their beings. Piational creatures have divine statutes copied
in their heart. For men it is clear, Piom. ii. 14, every son of Adam, at his
coming into the world, brings with him a law in his nature ; and when
reason clears itself up from the clouds of sense, he can make some difierence
between good and evil, discern something of fit and just. Every man finds
a law within him that checks him if he offends it. None are without a
legal indictment, and a legal executioner within them. God or none was
the author of this as a sovereign Lord, in establishing a law in man at the
same time, wherein, as an almighty creator, he imparted a bemg. This
law proceeds from God's general power of governing, as he is the author of
nature, and binds not barely as it is the reason of man, but by the authority
of God, as it is a law engraven on his conscience. And no doubt but a law
was given to the angels ; God did not govern those intellectual creatures as
he doth brutes, and in a way inferior to his rule of man. Some sinned, all
might have sinned in regard of the changeableness of their nature. Sin
cannot be but against some rule : ' WTiere there is no law, there is no trans-
gression.' ^^^lat that law was, is not revealed ; but certainly it must be the
same in part with the moral law, so far as it agreed with their spiritual
natures, — a love to God, a worship of him, and a love to one another in their
societies and persons.

(3.) The dominion of God is manifest in the reason of some laws, which
seem to be nothing else than purely his own will. Some laws there are for
which a reason may be rendered from the nature of the thing enjoined, as
to love, honour, and worship God. For others, none but this, God will
have it so. Such was that positive law to Adam, of not eating of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil, Gen. ii, 17, which was merely an asserting
his own dominion, and was different from that law of nature God had
written in his heart. No other reason of this seems to us but a resolve to
try man's obedience in a way of absolute sovereignty, and to manifest his
right over all creatures, to reserve what he pleased to himself, and permit
the use of what he pleased to man, and to signify to man that he was to

Ps. cm. 19.] god's domikion. 429

depend on him who was his Lord, and not on his own will. There was no
more hurt in itself for Adam to have eaten of that than of any other in the
garden, the fi-uit was pleasant to the eye and good for food; but God would
shew the right he had over his own goods, and his authority over man, to
reserve what he pleases of his own creation from his touch ; that since man
could not claim a propriety in anything, he was to meddle with nothing but
by the leave of his sovereign, either discovered by a special or general license.
Thus God shewed himself the Lord of man, and that man was but his steward
to act by his orders. If God had forbidden man the use of more trees in the
garden, his command had been just, since as a sovereign Lord he might dis-
pose of his own goods ; and when he had granted him the whole compass of
that pleasant garden, and the whole world round about for him and his pos-
terity, it was a more tolerable exercise of his dominion to reserve this one
tree as a mark of his sovereignty, when he had left all others to the use of
Adam. He reserved nothing to himself as Lord of the manor but this; and
Adam was prohibited nothing else but this one, as a sign of his subjection.
Now, for this no reason can be rendered by any man, but merely the will of
God ; this was merely a fruit of his dominion.

For the moral laws a reason may be rendered. To love God hath reason
to enforce it besides God's will, viz., the excellency of his nature, and the
greatness and multitudes of his benefits ; to love our neighbour hafh enforc-
ing reasons, viz., the conjunction in blood, and the preservation of human
society, and the need we may stand in of their love ourselves. But no rea-
son can be assigned of this positive command about the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, but merely the pleasure of God. It was a branch of his
pure dominion to try man's obedience, and a mark of his goodness to try it
by so easy and light a precept, when he might have extended his authority
further. Had not God given this or the like order, his absolute dominion
had not been so conspicuous. It is true, Adam had a law of nature in him,
whereby he was obliged to perpetual obedience ; and though it was a part of
God's dominion to implant it in him, yet his supreme dominion over the
creatures had not been so visible to man but by this, or a precept of the
same kind. What was commanded or prohibited by the law of nature did
bespeak a comeliness in itself, it appeared good or evil to the reason of man ;
but this was neither good nor evil in itself, it received its sole authority
from the absolute will of God, and nothing could result from the fruit itself,
as a reason why man should not taste it, but only the sole will of God.
And as God's dominion was most conspicuous in this precept, so man's
obedience had been most eminent in observing it ; for in his obedience to
it, nothing but the sole power and authority of God, which is the proper
rule of obedience, could have been respected, not any reason from the thing
itself.

To this we may refer some other commands, as that of appointing the
time of solemn and public worship the seventh day. Though the worship
of God be a part of the law of nature, yet the appointing a particular day,
wherein he would be more formally and solemnly acknowledged than on
other days, was grounded upon his absolute right of legislation ; for there
was nothing in the time itself that could render that day more holy than
another, though God respected his finishing the work of creation in his
institution of that day. Gen. ii. 3. Such were the ceremonial commands of
sacrifices and washings under the law, and the commands of sacraments
under the gospel ; the one to last till the first coming of Christ and his
passion, the other to last till the second coming of Christ and his triumph.
Thus he made natural and unavoidable uncleannesses to be sins, and the

430 ouarnock's works. [Ps, CIII. 19.

to aching a dead body to be pollution, which in their own nature were
not so.

(4.) The dominion of God appears in the moral law, and his majesty in
publishing it. As the law of nature was writ by his own fingers in the
nature of man, so it was engraven by his own finger in the tables of stone,
Exod. xxxi. 18, which is very emphatically expressed to be a mark of God's
dominion. Chap, xxxii. 16, 'And the tables were the work of God ; and the
writing was the writing of God, engraven upon the tables.' And when the
first tables were broken, though he orders Moses to frame the tables, yet
the writing of the law he reserves to himself, chap, xxxiv. 1. It is not said
of any part of the Scripture that it was writ by the finger of God, but only
of the Decalogue. Herein he would have his sovereignty eminently appear ;
it was published by God in state, with a numerous attendance of his hea-
venly militia, Deut. xxxii. 2. And the artillery of heaven was shot ofi" at
the solemnity, and therefore it is called ' a fiery law,' coming ' from his right
hand,' i. e. his sovereign power. It was published with all the marks of
supreme majesty.

(5.) The dominion of God appears in the obligation of the law, which
reacheth the conscience. The laws of every prince are framed for the out-
ward conditions of men; they do not by their authority bind the conscience,
and what obligations do result from them upon the conscience is either
from their being the same immediately with divine laws, or as they are
according to the just power of the magistrate, founded on the law of God.
Conscience hath a protection from the King of kings, and cannot be arrested
by any human power. God hath given man but an authority over half the
man, and the worst half too, that which is of an earthly origin ; but reserved
the authority over the better and more heavenly half to himself. The do-
minion of earthly princes extends only to the bodies of men, they have no
authority over the soul, their punishment and rewards cannot' reach it. And
therefore their laws by their single authority cannot bind it, but as they are
coincident with the law of God, or as the equity of them is subservient to
the preservation of human society, a regular and righteous thing, which is
the divine end in government, and so they bind as they have a relation to
God as the supreme magistrate. The conscience is only intelligible to God
in its secret motions, and therefore only guidable by God; God only pierceth
into the conscience by his eye, and therefore only can conduct it by his rule.
Man cannot tell whether we embrace this law in our heart and consciences,
or only in appearance. He only can judge it, Luke xii. 3, 4, and therefore
he only can impose laws upon it ; it is out of the reach of human penal
authority, if their laws be transgressed inwardly by it. Conscience is a
book in some sort as sacred as the Scripture, no addition can be lawfully
made to it, no subtraction from it. Men cannot diminish the duty of con-
science, or raze out the law God hath stamped upon it. They cannot put
a S2ipersedeas to the writ of conscience, or stop its mouth with a noli prosequi.
They can make no addition by their authority to bind it; it is a flower in the
crown of divine sovereignty only.

[1.] His sovereignty appears in a power of dispensing with his own laws.
It is as much a part of his dominion to dispense with his laws as to enjoin
them ; he only hath the power of relaxing his own right, no creature hath
power to do it ; that would be to usurp a superiority over him, and order
above God himself. Repealing or dispensing with the law is a branch of
royal authority. It is true God will never dispense with those moral laws
which have an eternal reason in themselves and their own nature, as for a
creature to fear, love, and honour God ; this would be to dispense with his

Ps. cm. 19. J god's dominion. 431

own holiness and the righteousness of his nature, to sully the purity of his
own dominion ; it would write folly upon the first creation of man after the
image of God, by writing mutability upon himself, in framing himself after
the corrupted image of man. It would null and frustrate the excellency of
the creature, wherein the image of God mostly shines; nay, it would be to
dispense with a creature's being a creator,* and make him independent upon
the sovereign of the world in moral obedience.

[2.] But God hath a right to dispense with the ordinary laws of nature
in the inferior creatures ; he hath a power to alter their course by an arrest
of miracles, and make them come short, or go beyond his ordinances estab-
lished for them. He hath a right to make the sun stand still or move back-
ward, to bind up the womb of the earth and bar the influence of the clouds,
bridle in the rage of the fire and the fury of lions, make the liquid waters
stand like a wall, or pull up the dam which he hath set to the sea, and com-
mand it to overflow the neighbouring countries. He can dispense with the
natural laws of the whole creation, and strain every string beyond its ordi-
nary pitch.

Positive laws he hath reversed, as the ceremonial law given to the Jews.
The very nature indeed of that law required a repeal, and fell of course ;
when that which was intended by it was come, it was of no longer signifi-
cancy ; as before it was a useful shadow, it would afterwards have been an
empty one. Had not God took away this, Christianity had not in all likeli-
hood been propagated among the Gentiles. This was the ' partition wall'
between Jews and Gentiles, Eph. ii. 14, which made them a distinct family
from all the world, and was the occasion of the enmity of the Gentiles against
the Jews. When God had, by bringing in what was signified by those rites,
declared his decree for the ceasing of them; and when the Jews, fond of
those divine institutions, would not allow him the right of repealing what he
had the authority of enacting, he resolved, for the asserting his dominion, to
bury them in the ruins of the temple and city, and make them for ever
uncapable of practising the main and essential parts of them ; for the temple
being the legal pillar of the service, by demolishing that God hath taken
away the right of sacrificing, it being peculiarly annexed to that place ; they
have no altar dignified with a fire from heaven to consume their sacrifices,
no legal high priest to offer them ; God hath by his providence changed
his own law, as well as by his precept.

Yea, he hath gone higher by virtue of his sovereignty, and changed the
whole scene and methods of his government after the fall from king creator
to king redeemer. He hath revoked the law of works as a covenant, released
the penalty of it from the believing sinner by transferring it upon the surety,
who interposed himself by his own will and divine designation. He hath
established another covenant, upon other promises, in a higher root, with
greater privileges and easier terms. Had not God had this right of
sovereignty, not a man of Adam's posterity could have been blessed; he and
they must have lain groaning under the misery of the fall, which had rendered
both himself and all in his loins unable to observe the terms in the first
covenant.

He hath, as some speak, dispensed with his own moral law in some cases,
in commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, a righteous son,
a son whereof he had the promise, that ' in Isaac should his seed be called;'
yet he was commanded to sacrifice him by the right of his absolute sovereignty,
as the supreme Lord of the lives of his creatures, from the highest angel to
the lowest worm, whereby ho bound his subjects to this law, not himself.
♦ Qu. 'creature'? — Ed.

432 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

Our lives are due to him when he calls for them, and they are a just forfeit
to him at the very moment we sin, at the very moment we come into the
world, by reason of the venom of our nature against him, and the disturbance
the first sin of man (whereof we are inheritors) gave to his glory. Had
Abraham sacrificed his son of his own head, he had sinned, yea, in attempt-
ing it ; but being authorised from heaven, his act was obedience to the
sovereign of the world, who had a power to dispense with his own law ; and
with this law he had before dispensed in the case of Cain's murder of Abel,
as to the immediate punishment of it with death, which indeed was settled
afterwards by his authority, but then omitted because of the paucity of men,
and for the peopling the world, but settled afterwards, when there was
almost, though not altogether, the like occasion of omitting it for a time.
[3.] His sovereignty appears in punishing the transgression of his law.
First, This is a branch of God's dominion as lawgiver. So was the
vengeance God would take upon the Amalekites. Exod. xvii. 16, ' The
Lord hath sworn, that the Lord will have war.' The Hebrew is, ' the hand
upon the throne of the Lord,' as in the margin. As a lawgiver, he saves or
destroys, James iv. 12. He acts according to his own law, in a congruity
to the sanction of his own precepts ; though he be an arbitrary lawgiver,
appointing what laws he pleases, yet he is not an arbitrary judge. As he
commands nothing but what he hath a right to command, so he punisheth
none but whom he hath a right to punish, and with such punishment as the
law hath denounced. All his acts of justice and inflictions of curses are the
eff'ects of this sovereign dominion : Ps. xxix. 10, * He sits king upon the
floods;' upon the deluge of waters wherewith he drowned the world,
say some. It is a right belonging to the authority of magistrates, to pull
up the infectious weeds that corrupt a commonwealth. It is no less the
right of God, as the lawgiver and judge of all the earth, to subject criminals
to his vengeance, after they have rendered themselves abominable in his
eyes, and carried themselves unworthy subjects of so great and glorious a
Mng. The first name whereby God is made known in Scripture is Elohim :
Gen. i. 1, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;' a
name which signifies his power of judging, in the opinion of some critics.
From him it is derived to earthly magistrates ; their judgment is said there-
fore to be the 'judgment of God,' Deut. i. 17. When Christ came, he pro-
posed this gi-eat motive of repentance, from the kingdom of heaven being at
hand ; the kingdom of his grace, whereby to invite men; the kingdom of his
justice, in the punishment of the neglecters of it, whereby to terrify men.
Punishments as well as rewards belong to royalty ; it issued accordingly.
Those that believed and repented came under his gi'acious sceptre ; those
that neglected and rejected it, fell under his iron rod. Jerusalem was
destroyed, the temple demolished, the inhabitants lost their lives by the
edge of the sword, or lingered them out in the chains of a miserable cap-
tivity. This term of judge, which signifies a sovereign right to govern and
punish delinquents, Abraham gives him, when he came to root out the
people of Sodom, and make them the examples of his vengeance, Gen.
xviii. 25.

Secondhj, Punishing the transgressions of his law. This is a necessary
branch of dominion. His sovereignty in making laws would be a trifle if
there were not also an authority to vindicate those laws from contempt and
injury ; he would be a Lord only spurned at by rebels. Sovereignty is not
preserved without justice. When the psalmist speaks of the majesty of God's
kingdom, he tells us that * righteousness and judgment are the habitation
of his throne,' Ps. xcvii. 1, 2. These are the engines of divine dignity,

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 433

which render him glorious and majestic. A legislative power would be
trampled on without executive ; by this the reverential apprehensions of God
are preserved in the world. He is known to be Lord of the world by ' the
judgments which he executes,' Ps. ix. 16. When he seems to have lost his
dominion, or given it up in the world, he recovers it by punishment. When
he takes some away ' with a whirlwind, and in his wrath,' the natural con-
sequence men make of it is this, ' Surely there is a God that judgeth the
earth,' Ps. Iviii. 9, 11. He reduceth the ci'eature by the lash of his judg-
ments, that would not acknowledge his authority in his precepts. Those
sins which disown his government in the heart and conscience, as pride,
inward blasphemy, &c., he hath reserved a time hereafter to reckon for. He
doth not presently ^hoot his arrows into the marrow of every delinquent, but
those sins which traduce his government of the world, and tear up the foun-
dations of human converse, and a public respect to him, he reckons with
particularly here as well as hereafter, that the life of his sovereignty might
not always faint in the world.

Thirdly, This of punishing was the second discovery of his dominion in
the world. His first act of sovereignty was the giving a law ; the next, his
appearance in the state of a judge. When his orders were violated, he
rescues the honour of them by an execution of justice. He first judged the
angels, punishing the evil ones for their crime ; the first court he kept
among them as a governor was to give them a law ; the second court he kept,
was as a judge trying the delinquents, and adjudging the offenders to be
' reserved in chains of darkness,' till the final execution, Jude 6. And at
the same time probably he confirmed the good ones in their obedience by
grace. So the first discovery of his dominion to man was the giving him a
precept ; the next was the inflicting a punishment for the breach of it. He
summons Adam to the bar, indicts him for his crime, finds him guilty by
his own confession, and passeth sentence on him according to the rule he
had before acquainted him with.

Fourthly, The means whereby he punisheth shews his dominion. Some-
times he musters up hail and mildew ; sometimes he sends regiments of
wild beasts ; so he threatens Israel, Lev. xxvi. 22 ; sometimes he sends out
a party of angels to beat up the quarters of men, and make a carnage among
them, 2 Kings xix. 35 ; sometimes he mounts his thundering battery, and
shoots forth his ammunition from the clouds, as against the Philistines,
1 Sam. vii. 10 ; sometimes he sends the slightest creatures to shame the
pride and punish the sin of man, as lice, frogs, locusts, as upon the Egj'p-
tians, Exod. viii., ix., x.

2. This dominion is manifested by God as a proprietor and lord of his
creatures, and his own goods.

And this is evident,

(1.) In the choice of some persons from eternity. He hath set apart
some from eternity, wherein he will display the invincible efficacy of his
grace, and thereby infallibly bring them to the fruition of glory : Eph. i. 4,
6, ' According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having
predestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, ac-
cording to the good pleasure of his will.' Why doth he write some names
in the book of life, and leave out others ? why doth he enrol some whom
he intends to make denizens of heaven, and refuse to put others on his
register? The apostle tells us, it is the pleasure of his will. You may
render a reason for many of God's actions till you come to this top and foun-
dation of all ; and under what head of reason can man reduce this act, but to that

VOL. II. E e

4M chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

of his royal prerogative ! "W'hy doth God save some, and condemn others at
last ? Because of the faith of the one, and unbeUef of the other. Why do
some men believe ? Because God hath not only given them the means of
grace, but accompanied those means with the efficacy of his Spirit. Why
did God accompany those means with the efficacy of his Spirit in some, and
not in others ? Because he had decreed by grace to prepare them for glory.
But why did he decree or choose some, and not others ? Into what will you
resolve this, but into his sovereign pleasure ? Salvation and condemnation
at the last upshot, are acts of God as the judge, conformable to his own law
of giving life to believers, and inflicting death upon unbelievers ; for those a
reason may be rendered, but the choice of some and pretention of others,
is an act of God as he is a sovereign monarch, before any law was actually
transgressed, because not actually given. When a prince redeems* a rebel,
he acts as a judge according to law ; but when he calls some out to pardon,
he acts as a sovereign by a prerogative above law ; into this the apostle re-
solves it, Rom. ix. 13, 15. When he speaks of God's loving Jacob and
hating Esau, and that before they had done either good or evil, it is because
God ' will have mercy on whom he will have mercy^ and compassion on
whom he will have compassion.' Though the first scope of the apostle, in
the beginning of the chapter, was to declare the reason of God's rejecting
the Jews and calling in the Gentiles, had he only intended to demolish the
pride of the Jews, and flat their opinion of merit, and aimed no higher than
that providential act of God, he might, convincingly enough to the reason of
men, have argued from the justice of God, provoked by the obstinacy of the
Jews, and not have had recourse to his absolute will ; but since he asserts
this latter,! the strength of his argument seems to He thus : if God, by his
absolute sovereignty, may resolve and fix his love upon Jacob, and estrange
it from Esau, or any other of his creatures, before they have done good or
evil, and man have no gi-ound to call his infinite majesty to account, may
he not deal thus with the Jews, when their demerit would be a bar to any
complaints of the creatui-e against him ? If God were considered here in
the quality of a judge, it had been fit to have considered the matter of fact
in the criminal ; but he is considered as a sovereign, rendering no other rea-
son of his action but his own will: ' whom he will he hardens,' ver. 18 ; and
then the apostle concludes, ver. 20, ' Who art thou, O man, that repliest
against God ?' If the reason drawn from God's sovereignty doth not satisfy
in this inquiry, no other reason can be found wherein to acquiesce. For the
last condemnation there will be sufficient reason to clear the justice of his
proceedings. But in this case of election no other reason but what is al-
leged, viz., the will of God, can be thought of, but what is Uable to such
knotty exceptions that cannot well be untied.

[1.] It could not be any merit in the creature that might determine God
to choose him. If the decree of election falls not under the merit of Christ's
passion, as the procui-ing cause, it cannot fall under the merit of any part
of the corrupted mass. The decree of sending Christ did not precede, but
followed in order of nature, the deterxaination of choosing some. When men
were d^osen as the subjects for glory, Christ was chosen as the means for
the bringing them to glory : Eph. i. 4, ' Chosen us in him, and predesti-
nated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ.' The choice was not
merely in Christ as the moving cause, — that the apostle asserts to be the
good pleasure of his will, — but in Christ, as the means of conveying to the
chosen ones the fruits of their election. WTiat could there be in any man
that could invite God to this act, or be a cause of distinction of one branch
* Qu. ' condemns ?'— Ed. f A myrald, Dissert, p. 101, 102.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 435

of Adam from another ? Were they not all hewed out of the same rock, and
tainted with the same corruption in blood ? Had it been possible to invest
them with a power of merit at the first, had not that venom contracted in
their nature degraded all of power for the future ? What merit was there
in any but of wrathful punishment, since they were all considered as crimi-
nals, and the cursed brood of an ungrateful rebel ? What dignity can there
be in the nature of the purest part of clay to be made a vessel of honour,
more than in another part of clay, as pure as that, which was formed into a
vessel for mean and sordid use ? What had any one to move his mercy
more than another, since they were all children of wrath, and equally daubed
with original guilt and filth ? Had not all an equal proportion of it to pro-
voke his justice ? What merit is there in one dry bone more than another,
to be inspii-ed with the breath of a spiritual life ? Did not all lie wallowing
in their own filthy blood, and what could the steam and noisomeness of that
deserve at the hands of a pure Majesty, but to be cast into ^ sink furthest
from his sight ? Were they not all considered in this deplorable posture,
with an equal proportion of poison in their nature, when God first took his
pen and singled out some names to write in the book of life ? It could not
be merit in any one piece of this abominable mass that should stir up that
resolution in God to set apart this person for a vessel of glory, while he per-
mitted another to putrefy in his own gore. He loved Jacob and hated Esau,
though they were both parts of the common mass, the seed of the same
loins, and lodged in the same womb,

[2.] Nor could it be any foresight of works to be done in time by them,
or of faith, that might determine God to choose them. What good could
he foresee resulting from extreme corruption, and a nature alienated from
him ? What could he foresee of good to be done by them, but what he
resolved in his own will, to bestow an ability upon them to bring forth ?
His choice of them was to a holiness, noi for a holiness preceding his deter-
mination, Eph, i. 4. He hath chosen us, ' that we might be holy ' before
him : he ordained us ' to good works,' noi for them, Eph. ii. 10. What is
a fruit cannot be a moving cause of that whereof it is a fruit. Grace is a
stream from the spring of electing love ; the branch is not the cause of the
root, but the root of the branch, nor the stream the cause of the spring, but
the spring the cause of the stream. Good works suppose grace, and a good
and right habit in the person, as rational acts suppose reason. Can any
man say that the rational acts man performs after his creation were a cause
why God created him ? This would make creation and everything else not
so much an act of his will as an act of his understanding. God foresaw no
rational act in man before the act of his will to give him reason, nor foresees
faith in any, before the act of his will determining to give him faith : Eph.
ii. 8, ' Faith is the gift of God.' In the salvation which grows up from this
first purpose of God, he regards not the works we have done as a principal
motive to settle the top-stone of our happiness, but his own purpose, and
the grace given in Christ : 2 Tim. i. 9, ' Who hath saved us, and called us
with a holy calling, not according to our own works, but according to his
own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ before the world
began.' • The honour of our salvation cannot be challenged by our works,
much less the honour of the foundation of it. It was a pure gift of grace,
without any respect to any spiritual, much less natural perfection. Why
should the apostle mention that circumstance, when he speaks of God's
loving Jacob and hating Esau, * when neither of them had done good or
evil,' Rom. ix. 11, if there were any foresight of men's works as the moving
acuse of his love or hatred ? God regarded not the worka of either as the

436 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

first cause of his choice, but acted by his own liberty, without respect to any
of their actions, which were to be done by them in time. If faith be the
fruit of election, the prescience of faith doth not influence the electing act of
God : Titus i. 1, it is called ' the faith of God's elect ;' ' Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect;' i.e. settled in this ofiice
to bring the elect of God to faith. If men be chosen by God upon the fore-
sight of faith, or not chosen till they have faith, they are not so much God's
elect as God their elect ; they choose God by faith, before God chooseth
them by love. It had not been the faith of God's elect; i.e. of those
already chosen, but the faith of those that were to be chosen by God after-
wards. Election is the cause of faith, and not faith the cause of election.*
Fire is the cause of heat, and not the heat of fii*e ; the sun is the cause of
the day, and not the day the cause of the rising of the sun. Men are not
chosen because they believe, but they believe because they are chosen. The
apostle did ill else to appropriate that to the elect which they had no more
interest in by virtue of their election than the veriest reprobate in the world.
If the foresight of what works might be done by his creatures was the motive
of his choosing them, why did he not choose the devils to redemption, who
could have done him better service by the strength of their nature than the
whole mass of Adam's posterity ?

Well, then, there is no possible way to lay the original foundation of this
act of election and pretention, in anything but the absolute sovereignty of
God.

Justice or injustice comes not into consideration in this case. There is
no debt, which justice or injustice always respects in its acting. If he had
pleased, he might have chosen all ; if he had pleased, he might have chosen
none. It was in his supreme power to have resolved to have left all Adam's
posterity under the rack of his justice ; if he determined to snatch out any,
it was a part of his dominion, but without any injury to the creatures he
leaves under their own guilt. Did he not pass by the angels and take man ?
And by the same right of dominion may he pick out some men from the
common mass, and lay aside others to bear the punishment of their crimes.
Are they not all his subjects ? All are his criminals, and may be dealt with
at the pleasure of their undoubted Lord and Sovereign. This is a work of
arbitary power, since he might have chosen none, or chosen all, as he saw
good himself. It is at the liberty of the artificer to determine his wood or
stone to such a figui-e, that of a prince or that of a toad ; and his materials
have no right to complain of him, since it lies wholly upon his own hberty.
They must have little sense of their own vileness, and God's infinite excel-
lency above them by right of creation, that will contend that God hath a
lesser right over his creatures than an artificer over his wood or stone. If
it were at his liberty whether to redeem man or send Christ upon such an
undertaking, it is as much at his liberty, and the prerogative is to be allowed
him, what persons he will resolve to make capable of enjoying the fruits of
that redemption. One man was as fit a subject for mercy as another, as
they all lay in their original guilt. Why would not divine mercy cast its
eve upon this man as well as upon his neighbour ? There was no cause in
tiie creature, but all in God, it must be resolved into his own will.

Yet not into a will without wisdom. God did not choose hand over head,
and act by mere will without reason and understanding. An infinite wisdom
is far from such a kind of procedure; but the reason of God is inscrutable
to us, unless we could understand God as well as he understands himself.
The whole ground lies in God himself, no part of it in the creature : Rom,
* Daille m loc.

Ps. cm. 19. J god's dominion. 437

ix. 15, 16, 'Not in him that wills, nor in him that runs, but in God that
shews mercy.' Since God hath revealed no other cause than his will, we
can resolve it into no other than his sovereign empire over all creatures.
It is not without a stop to our curiosity, that in the same place where God
asserts the absolute sovereignty of his mercy to Moses, he tells him he could
not see his face: Exod. xxxiii. 19, 20, '1 will be gracious to whom I will
be gracious ;' and he said, ' Thou canst not see my face.' The rays of his
infinite wisdom are too bright and dazzling for our weakness. The apostle
acknowledged not only a wisdom in this proceeding, but a riches and trea-
sure of wisdom ; not only that, but a depth and vastness of those riches of
wisdom, but was unable to give us an inventory and scheme of it, Rom. xi.
33. The secrets of his counsels are too deep for us to wade into ; in attempt-
ing to know the reason of those acts, we should find ourselves swallowed up
into a bottomless gulf. Though the understanding be above our capacity,
yet the admiration of his authority, and submission to it, are not. ' We
should cast ourselves down at his feet, with a full resignation of ourselves
to his sovereign pleasure.' * This is a more comely carriage in a Christian,
than all the contentious endeavours to measure God by our line.

(2.) In bestowing grace where he pleases. God in conversion and pardon
works not as a natural agent, putting forth strength to the utmost, which God
must do if he did renew man naturally, as the sun shines and the fire burns,
which always act ad extremum viriinn, unless a cloud interpose to eclipse the
one, and water to extinguish the other. But God acts as ajoluntary agent,
which can freely exert his power when he please, and suspend it when he
please. Though God be necessarily good, yet he is not necessitated to
manifest all the treasures of his goodness to every subject ; he hath power
to distil his dews upon one part and not upon another. If he were necessi-
tated to express his goodness without a liberty, no thanks were due to him.
Who thanks the sun for shining on him, or the fire for warming him ? None ;
because they are necessary agents, and can do no other.

What is the reason he did not reach out his hand to keep all the angels
from sinking as well as some, or recover them when they were sunk '? What
is the reason he engrafts one man into the true vine, and lets another remain
a wild olive ? Why is not the efficacy of the Spirit always linked with the
motions of the Spirit ? Why doth he not mould the heart into a gospel
frame, when he fills the ear with a gospel sound '? Why doth he strike off
the chains from some, and tear the veil from the heart, whUe he leaves
others under their natural slavery and Egyptian darkness ? Why do some
lie under the bands of death, while another is raised to a spiritual life ?
What reason is there for all this but his absolute will "? The apostle resolves
the question, if the question be asked why he begets one and not another ?
Not from the will of the creature, but his own will, is the determination of
one, James i. 18. Why doth he work in one to will and to do, and not in
another '? Because of his good pleasure, is the answer of another, Philip,
ii. 13. He could as well new create every one, as he at first created them,
and make grace as universal as nature and reason ; but it is not his pleasure
60 to do.

[1.] It is not for want of strength in himself. The power of God is un-
questionably able to strike off the chains of unbelief from all. He could
surmount the obstinacy of every child of wrath, and inspire every son of
Adam with faith as well as Adam himself. He wants not a virtue superior
to the greatest resistance of his creature ; a victorious beam of hght might
be shot into their understandings, and a tiood of grace might overspread
* Tbia was Dr Goodwiu's speech when lie was in trouble.

438 charnock's works. [Ps, CIII. 19

their wills, with one word of his mouth, without putting forth the utmost of
his power. What hindrance could there be in any created spirit, which
cannot be easily pierced into, and new moulded by the Father of spirits '?
Yet he only breathes this efficacious virtue into some, and leaves others
under that insensibility and hardness which they love, and suifers them to
continue in their benighting ignorance, and consume themselves in the
embraces of their dear though deceitful Delilahs.

He could have conquered the resistance of the Jews, as well as chased
away the darkness and ignorance of the Gentiles ; no doubt but he could
overpower the heart of the most malicious devil, as well as that of the sim-
plest and weakest man ; but the breath of the almighty Spirit is in his own
power, to breathe where he lists, John iii. 8 ; it is at his liberty whether he
will give to any the feeling of the invincible efficacy of his grace. He did
not want strength to have kept man as firm as a rock against the temptation
of Satan, and poured in such a fortifying grace as to have made him impreg-
nable against the powers of hell, as well as he did secure the standing of the
angels against the sedition of their fellows. But it was his will to permit it
to be otherwise.

[2.] Nor is it from any prerogative in the ci*eature. He converts not any
for their natural perfection, because he seizeth upon the most ignorant ; not
for their moral perfection, because he converts the most sinful ; not for their
civil perfection, because he turns the most despicable.

First, Not for their natural perfection of knowledge. He opened the
minds and hearts of the more ignorant. Were the nature of the Gentiles
better manured than that of the Jews, or did the tapers of their understand-
ings burn clearer ? No ; the one were skilled in the prophecies of the Mes-
siah, and might have compared the predictions they owned with the actions
and sufferings of Christ, which they were spectators of. He let alone those
that had expectations of the Messiah, and expectations about the time of
Christ's appearance, both grounded upon the oracles wherewith he had en-
trusted them. The Gentiles were unacquainted with the prophets, and
therefore destitute of the expectations of the Messiah, Eph. ii. 12. They
were ' without Christ ;' without any revelation of Christ, because ' aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise,
having no hope, and without God in the world ;' without any knowledge of
God, or promises of Christ. The Jews might sooner in a way of reason
have been wrought upon than the Gentiles, who were ignorant of the pro-
phets, by whose writings they might have examined the truth of the apostles'
declarations; thus are they refused, that were the kindred of Christ accord-
ing to the flesh, and the Gentiles, that were at a greater distance from him,
brought in by God. Thus he catcheth not at the subtle and mighty devils,
who had an original in spiritual nature more like to him, but at weak and
simple man.

Secondly, Not for any moral perfection, because he converts the most sin-
ful ; the Gentiles steeped in idolatry and superstition. He sowed more
faith among the Eomans than in Jerusalem, more faith in a city that was
the common sewer of all the idolatry of the nations conquered by them, than
in that city which had so signally been owned by him, and had not practised
any idolatry since the Babylonish captivity. He planted saintship at Corinth,
a place notorious for the infamous worship of Venus, a superstition attended
with the grossest uncleanness ; at Ephesus, that presented the whole world
with a cup of fornication in their temple of Diana ; among the Colossians,
votaries to Cybele, in a manner of worship attended with beastly and lasci-
vious ceremonies. And what character had the Cretians from one of their

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 439

own poets, mentioned by the apostle to Titus, whom he had placed among
them to further the progress of the gospel, but the vilest and most abomi-
nable '? Titus i. 12, ' Liars,' not to be credited ; ' evil beasts,' not to be asso-
ciated with ; ' slow beUies,' fit for no service. What prerogative was there
in the nature of such putrefaction ? As much as in that of a toad, to be
elevated to the dignity of an angel. What steam from such dunghills could
be welcome to him, and move him to cast his eye on them, and sweeten
them from heaven ? What treasures of worth were here to open the treasures
of his gi-ace ? Were such filthy snufis fit of themselves to be kindled by,
and become a lodging for, a gospel beam '? What invitements could he have
from lying, beastliness, gluttony, but only from his own sovereignty ? By
this he plucked firebrands out of the fire, while he left straighter and more
comely sticks to consume to ashes.

Thirdhj, Not for any civil perfection, because he turns the most despicable.
He elevates not nature to grace upon the account of wealth, honour, or any
civil station in the world ; he dispenseth not ordinarily those treasures to
those that the mistaken world foolishly admire and doat upon : 1 Cor. i. 26,
* Not many mighty, not many noble.' A purple robe is not usually decked
with this jewel. He takes more of mouldy clay than refined dust to cast into
his image, and lodges his treasures more in the earthly vessels than in the
world's golden ones. He gives out his richest doles to those that are the
scorn and reproach of the world. Should he impart his grace most to those
that abound in wealth or honour, it had been some foundation for a con-
ception that he had been moved, by those vulgarly esteemed excellencies,
to indulge them more than others. But such a conceit languisheth, when
we behold the subjects of his grace as void originally of any allurements as
they are full of provocations.

Hereby he declares himself free from all created engagements, and that he
is not led by any external motives in the object.

Fourthhj, It is not from any obligation which lies upon him. He is in-
debted to none, disobliged by all. No man deserves from him any act of
grace, but every man deserves what the most deplorable are left to sufier.
He is obliged by the children of wrath to nothing else but showers of wrath,
owes no more a debt to fallen man than to fallen devils, to restore them to
their first station by a superlative grace ; how was he more bound to restore
them than he was bound to preserve them, to catch them after they fell, than
to put a bar in the way of their faUing ? God, as a sovereign, gave laws to
men, and a strength sufficient to keep those laws. What obHgation is there
upon God to repair that strength man wilfully lost, and extract him out of
that condition into which he voluntarily plunged himself ? What if man
sinned by temptation, which is a reason alleged by some, might not many
of the devils do so too ? Though there was a first of them that sinned with-
out a temptation, yet many of them might be seduced into rebellion by the
ringleader. Upon that account he is no more bound to give grace to all
men than to devils. If he promised fife upon obedience, he threatened death
upon transgression. By man's disobedience God is quit of his promise, and
owes nothing but punishment upon the violation of his law. Indeed, man
may pretend to a claim of sufficient strength from him by creation, as God
is the author of nature, and he had it; but since he hath extinguished it by his
sin, he cannot in the least pretend any obligation on God for a new strength.
If it be a peradventure whether he will give repentance, as it is, 2 Tim. ii. 25,
there is no tie in the case ; a tie would put it beyond a peradventure with
a God that never forfeited his obligation. No husbandman thinks himself
obliged to bestow cost and pains, manure and 'tillage, upon one field more

440 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

than another ; though the nature of the gi-ound may require more, yet he is
at hberty whether he will expend more upon one than another.* He may
let it lie fallow as long as he please. God is less obliged to till and prune
his creatures than man is obliged to his field or trees. If a king proclaim a
pardon to a company of rebels, upon the condition of each of them paying
such a sum of money, their estates before were capable of satisfying the con-
dition, but their rebellion hath reduced them to an indigent condition, the
proclamation itself is an act of grace, the condition required is not impossible
in itself; the prince, out of a tenderness to some, sends them that sum of
money he hath by his proclamation obliged them to pay, and thereby enabled
them to answer the condition he requires : the fii'st he doth by a sovereign
authority ; the second he doth by a sovereign bounty, he was obliged to
neither of them ; punishment was a debt due to all of them. If he would
remit upon condition, he did relax his sovereign right ; and if he would by
his largess make any of them capable to fulfil the condition, by sending
them presently a sufficient sum to pay the fine, he acted as proprietor of his
own goods, to dispose of them in such a quantity to those to whom he was
not obliged to bestow a mite.

Fifthly, It must therefore be an act of his mere sovereignty. This can
only sit arbitrator in every gracious act. Why did he give grace to Abel
and not to Cain, since they both lay in the same womb, and equally derived
from their parents a taint in then- nature, but that he would shew a stand-
ing example of his sovereignty to the future ages of the world in the first
posterity of man ? Why did he give grace to Abraham, and separate him
from his idolatrous kindred, to dignify him to be the root of the Messiah ?
Why did he confine his promise to Isaac, and not extend it to Ishmael, the
seed of the same Abraham by Hagar, or to the children he had by Keturah
after Sarah's death? What reason can be alleged for this but his sovereign
will ? Why did he not give the fallen angels a moment of repentance after
their sin, but condemned them to irrevocable pains ? Is it not as free for
him to give grace to whom he please, as create what worlds he please ;
to form this corrapted clay into his own image, as to take such a parcel of
dust from all the rest of the creation whereof to compact Adam's body ?
Hath he not as much jurisdiction over the sinful mass of his creatures in a
new creation, as he had over the chaos in the old '? And what reason can
be rendered of his advancing this part of matter to the nobler dignity of a
star, and leaving that other part to make up the dark body of the earth,
to compact one part into a glorious sun, and another part into a hard rock,
but his royal prerogative ? What is the reason a prince subjects one male-
factor to punishment, and lifts up another to a place of trust and pi'ofit ?
that Pharaoh honoured the butler with an attendance on his person, and
remitted the baker to the hands of the executioner ? It was his pleasure.
And is not as great a right due to God as is allowed to the worms of the
earth ? "V\Tiat is the reason he hardens a Pharaoh, by a denying him that
grace which should mollify him, and allows it to another ? It is because he
will : Eom. ix. 18, ' Whom he will he hardens.' Hath not man the hberty
to pull up the sluice and let the water run into what part of the ground he
pleases ? What is the reason some have not a heart to understand the
beauty of his ways ? Because the Lord doth not give it them, Deut. xxix. 4.
Why doth he not give all his converts an equal measure of his sanctifying
grace ? Some have mites, and some have treasures. Why doth he give his
grace to some sooner, to some later ? Some are inspired in their infancy,
others not till a full age and after ; some not till they have fallen into some
* Claude sur la parabole des Noces, p, 29.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's DOIUNION. 441

gross sin, as Paul ; some betimes, that they may do him service, others later,
as the thief upon the cross, and presently snatcheth them out of the world.
Some are weaker, some stronger in nature ; some more beautiful and lovely,
others more uncomely and sluggish. It is so in supernaturals. What rea-
son is there for this but his own will ? This is instead of all that can be
assigned on the part of God. He is the free disposer of his own goods, and,
as a father, may give a greater portion to one child than to another. And
what reason of complaint is there against God ? May not a toad complain
that God did not make it a man, and give it a portion of reason, or a fly
complain fhat God did not make it an angel, and give it a garment of light,
had they but any spark of understanding, as well as man complain that God
did not give him grace as well as another ? Unless he sincerely desired it,
and then was denied it, he might complain of God, though not as a sove-
reign, yet as a promiser of grace to them that ask it. God doth not render his
sovereignty formidable, he shuts not up his throne of grace from any that
seek him ; he invites man, his arms are open, and the sceptre stretched out;
and no man continues under the arrest of his lusts but he that is unwilling
to be otherwise ; and such a one hath no reason to complain of God.

(3.) His sovereignty is manifest in disposing the means of grace to some,
not to all. He hath caused the sun to shine bright in one place, while he
hath left others benighted and deluded by the devil's oracles. Why do the
evangelical dews fall in this or that place, and not in another ? Why was
the gospel pubUshed in Rome so soon, and not in Tartary ? Why hath it been
extinguished in some places as soon almost as it had been kindled in them ?
Why hath one place been honoured with the beams of it in one age, and been
covered with darkness the next ? One country hath been made a sphere for
this star that directs to Christ to move in, and afterwards it hath been taken
away and placed in another ; sometimes more clearly it hath shone, some-
times more darkly in the same place. What is the reason of this ? It is
true, something of it may be referred to the justice of God, but much more
to the sovereignty of God. That the gospel is published later and not
sooner, the apostle tells us is ' according to the commandment of the living
God,' Rom. xvi. 26.

[1.] The means of grace, after the families from Adam became distinct,
were never granted to all the world. After that fatal breach in Adam's
family by the death of Abel, and Cain's separation, we read not of the means
of grace continued among Cain's posterity ; it seems to be continued in
Adam's sole family, and not published in societies till the time of Seth :
Gen. iv. 26, * Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.' It was
continued in that family till the deluge, which was 1523 years after the crea-
tion according to some, or 1656 years according to others. After that, when
the world degenerated, it was communicated to Abraham, and settled in the
posterity that descended from Jacob ; though he left not the world without;
a witness of himself, and some sprinklings of revelations in other parts, as
appears by the book of Job, and the discourses of his friends.

[2. J The Jews had this privilege granted them above other nations, to
have a clearer revelation of God. God separated them from all the world
to honour them with the deposition of his oracles : Rom. iii. 2, ' To them
were committed the oracles of God.' In which regard, all other nations are
said to be * without God,' as being destitute of so great a privilege, Eph.
ii. 12. The Spirit blew in Canaan when the lands about it felt not the sav-
ing breath of it. ' He hath not dealt so with any nation : and as for his
judgments, they have not known them,' Ps. cxivii. 20. The rest had no
warnings from the prophets, no dictates from heaven, but what they had by

442 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

the light of nature, the view of the works of creation, and the administration
of providence, and what i*emained among them of some ancient traditions
derived from Noah, which in tract of time were much defaced. We read
but of one Jonah sent to Nineveh, but frequent alarms to the Israelites by
a multitude of prophets commissioned by God. It is true, the door of the
Jewish church was open to what proselytes would enter themselves, and em-
brace their religion and worship; but there was no public proclamation
made in the world ; only God, by his miracles in their deliverance from
Egypt (which could not but be famous among all the neighbour nations) de-
clared them to be a people favoured by heaven. But the tradition from
Adam and Noah was not publicly reviyed by God in other parts, and raised
from that grave of forgetfnlness wherein it had lain so long buried. Was
there any reason in them for this indulgence? God might have been as
liberal to any other nation, yea, to all the nations in the world, if it had
been his sovereign pleasure. Any other people were as fit to be entrusted
with his oracles, and be subjects for his worship, as that people, yet all
other nations, till the rejection of the Jews, because of their rejection of
Christ, were strangers from the covenant of promise. These people were
part of the common mass of the world. They had no prerogative in nature
above Adam's posterity. Were they the extract of an innocent part of his
loins, and all the other nations drained out of his putrefaction? Had the
blood of Abraham, from whom they were more immediately descended, any
more precious tincture than the rest of mankind? They as well as other
nations were made of one blood, Acts xvii. 16, and that corrupted both in
the spring and in the rivulets. Were they better than other nations when
God first drew them out of their slavery ? We have Joshua's authority for
it that they had complied with the Egyptian idolatry, and served other gods
in that place of their servitude. Josh. xxiv. 14. Had they had an abhor-
rency of the superstition of Egypt while they remained there, they could
not so soon have erected a golden calf for worship in imitation of the
Egyptian idols. All the rest of mankind had as inviting reasons to present
God with as those people had. God might have granted the same privilege
to all the world as well as to them, or denied it them, and endowed all the
rest of the world with his statutes ; but the enriching such a small company
of people with his divine showers, and leaving the rest of the world as a
barren wilderness in spirituals, can be placed on no other account originally
than that of his unaccountable sovereignty of his love to them. There was
nothing in them to merit such high titles from God, as his first-born, his
peculiar treasure, the apple of his eye. He disclaims any righteousness in
them, and speaks a word sufficient to damp such thoughts in them, by
charging them with their wickedness, while he ' loaded them with his bene-
fits.' Deut. ix. 4, 6, the Lord 'gives thee not this land for thy righteous-
ness ; for thou art a stifi'-necked people.' It was an act of God's free
pleasure to 'choose them to be a people to himself,' Deut. vii. 6.

[3.] God afterwards rejected the Jews, gave them up to the hardness of
their hearts, and spread the gospel among the Gentiles. He hath cast off
• the children of the kingdom,' those that had been enrolled for his subjects
for many ages, who seemed, by their descent from Abraham, to have a right
to the privileges of Abraham, and called men ' from the east and from the
west,' from the darkest corner of the world, ' to sit down with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,' i. e. to partake with them of
the promises of the gospel. Mat. viii. 11. The people that were accounted
accursed by the Jews, enjoy the means of grace, which have been hid from
those that were once dignified, these sixteen hundred years ; that they have

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 443

neither ephod nor terapbim, nor sacrifice, nor any true worship of God
among them, Hosea iii. 4. Why he should not give them grace to acknow-
ledge and own the person of the Messiah, to whom he had made the promises
of him for so many successive ages, but let their heart be fat, and their ears
heavy, Isa. vi. 10 ; why the gospel at length after the resurrection of
Christ should be presented to the Grentiles, not by chance, but pursuant to
the resolution and prediction of God, declared by the prophets, that it should
be so in time ; why he should let so many hundreds of years pass over,
after the world was peopled, and let the nations all that while soak in their
idolatrous customs ; why he should not call the Gentiles without rejecting
the Jews, and bind them both up together in the bundle of life ; why he
should acquaint some people with it, a little after the publishing it in Jeru-
salem, by the descent of the Spirit, and others not a long time after ; some
in the first ages of Christianity enjoyed it ; others have it not, as those
in America, till the last age of the world : can be referred to nothing but his
sovereign pleasure.

What merit can be discovered in the Gentiles ? There is something of
justice in the case of the Jews' rejection, nothing but sovereignty in the
Gentiles' reception into the church. If the Jews were bad, the Gentiles were
in some sort worse. The Jews owned the one true God, without mixture
of idols, though they owned not the Messiah in his appearance, which they
did in a promise ; but the Gentiles owned neither the one nor the other.
Some tell us, it was for the merit of some of their ancestors. How comes
the means of grace then to be taken from the Jew, who had (if any people
ever had) meritorious ancestors for a plea ? If the merit of some of their
former progenitors were the cause, what was the reason the debt due to their
merit was not paid to their immediate progeny, or to themselves, but to a
posterity so distant from them, and so abominably depraved, as the Gentile
world was, at the day of the gospel-sun striking into their horizon ? What
merit might be in their ancestors (if any could be supposed in the most re-
fined rubbish), it was so httle for themselves, that no oil could be spared
out of their lamps for others. What merit their ancestors might have,
might be forfeited by the succeeding generations. It is ordinarily seen,
that what honour a father deserves in a state for pubhc service, may be lost
by the son, forfeited by treason, and himself attainted.

Or was it out of a foresight that the Gentiles would embrace it, and the
Jews reject it ; that the Gentiles would embrace it in one place and not in
another ? How did God foresee it but in his own grace, which he was re-
solved to display in one, not in another ! It must be then still resolved
into his sovereign pleasure. Or did he foresee it in their wills and nature ?
What, were they not all one common dross ? Was any part of Adam by
nature better than another ? How did God foresee that which was not, nor
could be, without his pleasure to give ability and grace to receive ?

Well then, what reason but the sovereign pleasure of God can be alleged,
why Christ forbade the apostles at their first commission to preach to the
Gentiles, Mat. x, 15, but at the second and standing commission orders
them to preach ' to every creature ' ? Why did he put a demur to the resolu-
tions of Paul and Timothy, to impart light to Bithynia, or order them to
go into Macedonia ? Was that country more worthy upon whom lay a great
part of the blood of the world shed in Alexander's time. Acts xvi. 6, 7, 9, 10 ?
Why should Chorazin and Bethsaida enjoy those means that were not granted
to the Tyrians and Sidonians, who might probably have sooner reached out
their arms to welcome it ? Mat xi, 21, Why should God send the gospel into
our island, and cause it to flourish so long here, and not send it or continue

444 charnock's woeks. [Ps. CIII. 19.

it in the furthest eastern part of the world ? "Why should the very profes-
sion of Christianity possess so small a compass of ground in the world, but
five parts in thirty, the Mahomedans holding six parts, and the other nineteen
overgrown with paganism, where either the gospel was never planted, or else
since rooted up ? To whom will you refer this, but to the same cause our
Saviour doth the revelation of the gospel to babes, and not to the wise, even
to his Father? 'For so it seemed good in thy sight,' Mat xi. 25, 26.
' For so was thy good pleasure before thee' (as in the original). It is at his
pleasure whether he will give any a clear revelation of his gospel, or leave
them only to the light of nature. He could have kept up the first beam of
the gospel in the promise in all nations, among the apostasies of Adam's
posterity, or renew it in all nations, when it began to be darkened, as well as he
first published it to Adam after his fall. But it was his sovereign pleasure, to
permit it to be obscured in one place, and to keep it lighted in another.

(4.) His sovereignty is manifest in the various influences of the means of
grace. He sailh to these waters of the sanctuary, as to the floods of the
sea, Hitherto you shall go, and no further. Sometimes they wash away the
filth of the flesh, and outward man, but not that of the spirit. The gospel
spiritualiseth some and only moraliseth others ; some are by the power of
it struck down to conviction, but not raised up to conversion. Some have
only the gleams of it in their consciences, and others more powerful flashes ;
some remain in their thick darkness under the beaming of the gospel every
day in their face, and after a long inseusibleness, are roused by its light and
warmth. Sometimes there is such a powerful breath in it, that it levels the
haughty imaginations of men, and lays them at its feet, that before strutted
against it in the pride of their heart. The foundation of this is not in the
gospel itself, which is always the same, nor in the ordinances, which are
channels as sound at one time as at another, but divine sovereignty, that
spirits them as he pleaseth, and ' blows when and where it lists.' It has
sometimes conquered its thousands. Acts ii. 41, at another time scarce its
tens ; sometimes the harvest hath been great when the labourers have been
but few, at another time, it hath been small when the labourers have been
many ; sometimes whole sheaves, at another time scarce gleanings. The
evangelical net hath been sometimes full at a cast, and at every cast, at
another time many have laboured all night and day too, and catched nothing:
Acts ii. 47, ' The Lord added to the church daily.' The gospel chariot doth
not always return with captives chained to the sides of it, but sometimes
blurred and reproached, wearing the marks of hell's spite, instead of im-
printing the marks of its own beauty. In Corinth, it triumphed over many
people. Acts xviii. 10; in Athens, it is mocked, and gathers but a few
clusters. Acts xvii. 32, 34. God keeps the key of the heart as well as of
the womb. The apostles had a power of publishing the gospel, and working
miracles, but under the divine conduct. It was an instrumentality durante
bene 2^1 acito, and as God saw it convenient. Miracles were not upon every
occasion allowed to them to be wrought, nor success upon every adminis-
tration granted to them. God sometimes lent them the key, but to take
out no more treasure than was allotted to them.

There is a variety in the time of gospel operation : some rise out of their
graves of sin and beds of sluggishness at the first appearance of this sun,
others lie snorting longer. Why doth not God spirit it at one season as
well as at another, but set his distinct periods of time, but because he will
shew his absolute freedom ?

And do we not sometimes experiment that, after the most solemn prepara-
tions of the heart, we are frustrated of those incomes we expected. Per-

Ps. cm. 19/ god's dojiintox. 445

haps it was because we thongbt divine returns were clue to our preparations,
and God stops up the channel, and we return drier than we came, that God
ma}' confute our false opinion, and preserve the honour of his own sove-
reignty. Sometimes we leap with John Baptist in the womb at the appear-
ance of Christ ; sometimes we he upon a lazy bed when he knocks from
heaven ; sometimes the fleece is dry and sometimes wet, and God withholds
to drop down his dew of the morning upon it. The dews of his word, as
well as the droppings of the clouds, belong to his royalty. Light will not
shine into the heart, though it shine round about us, without the sovereign
order of that God ' who commanded light to shine out of the darkness ' of
the chaos, 2 Cor. iv. 6. And is it not seen also in regard of the refreshing
influences of the word ? Sometimes the strongest arguments and clearest
promises prevail nothing towards the quelling black and despairing imagina-
tions, when afterwards we have found them frighted away by an unexpected
word, that seemed to have less virtue in itself than any that passed in vain
before it. The reasonings of wisdom have dropped down like arrows against
a brazen wall, when the speech of a weaker person hath found an eflicacy.
It is God, by his sovereignty, spirits one word and not another. Sometimes
a secret word comes in, which was not thought of before, as dropped from
heaven, and gives a refreshing, when emptiness was found in all the rest.
One word from the hps of a sovereign prince is a greater cordial than all the
harangues of subjects without it. What is the reason of this variety, but
that God would increase the proofs of his own sovereignty ; that, as it was
a part of his dominion to create the beauty of a world, so it is no less to
create the peace as well as the grace of the heart ? Isa. Ivii. 19, * I create
the fruit of the hps, peace.'

Let us learn from hence to have adoring thoughts of, not murmuring
fancies against, the sovereignty of God ; to acknowledge it with thankful-
ness in what we have, to implore it with a holy submission in what we want.
To own God as a sovereign in a way of dependence, is the way to be owned
by him as subjects in a way of favour.

(5.) His sovereignty is manifested in giving a greater measure of know-
ledge to some than to others. What parts, gifts, excellency of nature anv
have above others are God's donative. ' He gives wisdom to the wise, and
knowledge to them that know understanding,' Dan. ii. 21. Wisdom the
habit, and knowledge the right use of it in discerning the right nature of
objects, and fitness of means conducing to the end ; all is but a beam of
di\-ine hght, and the ditierent degrees of knowledge in one man above
another are the efiects of his sovereign pleasure. He enlightens not the
minds of all men to know every part of his will ; one eats with a doubtful
conscience, another in faith without any staggering, Rom. xiv. 2. Peter had
a desire to keep up circumcision, not fully understanding the mind of God
in the abolition of the Jewish ceremonies, while Paul was clear in the truth
of that doctrine. A thought comes into our mind, that like a sunbeam
makes a Scripture truth visible in a moment, which before we were poring
upon without any success ; this is from his pleasure. One in the primitive
times had the gift of knowledge, another of wisdom ; one the gift of pro-
phecy, another of tongues ; one the gift of healing, another that of discerning
spirits. Why this gift to one man, and not to another ? Why such a dis-
tribution in several subjects ? Because it is his sovereign pleasure. * The
Spirit divides to every man severally as he will,' 1 Cor. xii. 11. Why doth
he give Bezaleel and Ahohab the gift of engraving, and making curious works
for the tabernacle, Exod. xxxi. 3, and not others ? Why doth he bestow
the treasures of evangelical knowledge upon the meanest of earthen vessels,

446 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

the poor Galileans, and neglect the Pharisees, stored with the knowledge
both of naturals and morals ? Why did he give to some, and not to others,
' to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven' ? Mat. xiii. 11. The
reason is implied in the words, because it ivas the mystery of his kingdom,
and therefore was the act of his sovereignty. How would it be a kingdom
and monarchy, if the governor of it were bound to do what he did ? It is to
be resolved only into the sovereign right of propriety of his own goods, that
he furnisheth babes with a stock of knowledge, and leaves the wise and
prudent empty of it. Mat. xi. 26, ' Even so, Father: for so it seemed good
in thy sight.' Why did he not reveal his mind to Eli, a grown man, and in
the highest office in the Jewish church, but open it to Samuel, a stripling ?
Why did the Lord go from the one to the other '? Because his motion
depends upon his own will. Some are of so dull a constitution, that they
are uncapable of any impression, like rocks too hard for a stamp ; others
like water, you may stamp what you please, but it vanisheth as soon as the
seal is removed. It is God forms men as he pleaseth. Some have parts to
govern a kingdom, others scarce brains to conduct their own affairs ; one is
fit to rule men, and another scarce fit to keep swine ; some have capacious
souls in crazy and deformed bodies, others contracted spirits and heavier
minds in a richer and more beautiful case. Why are not all stones alike ?
Some have a more sparkling light, as gems, more orient than pebbles; some
are stars of first, and others of less magnitude, others as mean as glow-worms,
a slimy lustre. It is because he is the sovereign disposer of what belongs
to him, and gives here, as well as at the resurrection, to one a glory of the
sun, to another that of the moon, and to a third a less, resembling that of a
star, 1 Cor. xv. 40. And this God may do by the same right of dominion
as he exercised when he endowed some kind of creatures with a greater per-
fection than others in their nature. Why may he not as well garnish one
man with a greater proportion of gifts, as make a man differ in excellency
from the nature of a beast ; or frame angels to a more purely spiritual nature
than a man ; or make one angel a cherubim or seraphim, with a greater
measure of light than another ? Though the foundation of this is his
dominion, yet his wisdom is not uninterested in his sovereign disposal ; he
garnisheth those with a greater ability, whom he intends for greater service,
than those he intends for less, or none at all ; as an artificer bestows more
labour, and carves a more excellent figure upon those stones that he designs
for a more honourable place in the building. But though the intending this
or that man for service, be the motive of laying in a greater provision in him
than in others, yet still it is to be referred to his sovereignty, since that
first act of culling him out for such an end was the fruit solely of his sovereign
pleasure. As when he resolved to make a creature, actually to glorify him,
in wisdom he must give him reason, yet the making such a creature was an
act of his absolute dominion.

(6.) His sovereignty is manifest in the calling some to a more special ser-
vice in their generation. God settles some in immediate offices of his ser-
vice, and perpetuates them in those offices, with a neglect of others, who
seem to have a greater pretence to them. Moses was a great sufferer for
Israel, the sohcitor for them in Egypt, and the conductor of them from
Egypt to Canaan ; yet he was not chosen to the high priesthood, but that
was an office settled upon Aaron, and his posterity after him in a hneal
descent. Moses was only pitched upon for the present rescue of the cap-
tived Israelites, and to be the instrument of divine miracles ; but notwith-
standing all the success he had in his conduct, his faithfulness in his
employment, and the transcendent familiarity he had with the great Ruler

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 447

of the world, his posterity were left in the common level of the tribe of Levi,
without any special mark of dignity upon them above the rest for all the
services of that great man. Why Moses for a temporary magistracy, Aaron
for a perpetual priesthood above all the rest of the Israehtes, hath little
reason but the absolute pleasure of God, who distributes his employments
as he pleaseth, and as a master orders this servant to do the noblest work,
and another to labour in baser offices, according to his pleasure. Why
doth he call out David, a shepherd, to sway the Jewish sceptre, above the
rest of the brothers, that had a fairer appearance, and had been bred in
arms, and inured to the toils and watchings of a camp ? Why should Mary
be the mother of Christ, and not some other of the same family of David,
of a more splendid birth, and a nobler education ? Though some other
reasons may be rendered, yet that which aflfords the greatest acquiescence,
is the sovereign will of God. Why did Christ choose out of the meanest of
the people the twelve apostles, to be heralds of his grace in Judea and other
parts of the world ; and afterwards select Paul, before Gamaliel his instructor,
and others of the Jews as learned as himself, and advance him to be the most
eminent apostle, above the heads of those who had ministered to Christ in
the days of his flesh ? Why should he preserve eleven of those he first called
to propagate and enlarge his kingdom, and leave the other to the employment
of shedding his blood ? Why in the times of our Reformation should he
choose a Luther out of a monastery, and leave others to their superstitious
nastiness, to perish in the traditions of their fathers ? Why set up Calvin
as a bulwark of the gospel, and let others as learned as himself wallow in
the sink of popery ? It is his pleasure to do so. The potter hath power
to separate this part of the clay to form a vessel for a more public use, and
another part of the clay to form a vessel for a more private one. God takes
the meanest clay to form the most excellent and honourable vessels in his
house. As he formed man, that was to govern the creatures, of the same
clay and earth whereof the beasts were formed, and not of that nobler
element of water which gave birth to the fish and birds, so he forms some
that are to do him the greatest service of the meanest materials, to manifest
the absolute right of his dominion.

(7.) His sovereignty is manifest in the bestowing much wealth and honour
upon some, and not vouchsafing it to the more industrious labours and
attempts of others. Some are abased, and others are elevated ; some are
enriched, and others impoverished ; some scarce feel any cross, and others
scarce feel any comfort, in their whole lives. Some sweat and toil, and what
they labour for runs out of their reach ; others sit still, and what they wish
for falls into their lap. One of the same clay hath a diadem to beautify
his head, and another wants a covering to protect him from the weather; one
hath a stately palace to lodge in, and another is scarce master of a cottage
where to lay his head ; a sceptre is put into one man's hand, and a spade
into another's; a rich purple garnisheth one man's body, while another wraps
himself in dunghill rags. The poverty of some, and the wealth of others, is
an efi'ect of the divine sovereignty, whence God is said to be the maker of
the poor as well as the rich, Prov. xxii. 2, not only of their persons, but of
their conditions. The earth and the fulness thereof is his propriety, and he
hath as much right as Joseph had, to bestow changes of raiment upon what
Benjamins he please. There is an election to a greater degree of worldly
felicity, as there is an election of some to a greater degree of supernatural
grace and glory. As he makes it ' rain upon one city, and not upon another,'
Amos iv. 7, so he causeth prosperity to distil upon the head of one, and not
upon another, crowning some with earthly blessings, while he crosseth others

448 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19,

with continual afflictions ; for he speaks of himself as a great proprietor of
the corn that nourisheth us, and the wine that cheers us, and the wool that
warms us : Hosea ii. 8, 9, 'I will take away,' not your corn and wine, but
' mil corn, my wine, my wool.' His right to dispose of the goods of every
particular person is unquestionable. He can take away from one, and pass
over the propriety to another ; thus he devolved the right of the Egyptian
jewels to the Israelites, and bestowed upon the captives what before he had
vouchsafed to the oppressors ; as every sovereign state demands the goods
of their subjects, for the public advantage in a case of exigency, though none
of that wealth was gained by any public office, but by their private industry,
and gained in a country not subject to the dominion of those that require a
portion of them. By this right he changes strangely the scene of the world :
sometimes those that are high are reduced to a mean and ignominious con-
dition, those that are mean are advanced to a state of plenty and glory ; the
counter which in accounting signifies now but a penny, is presently raised up
to signify a pound. The proud ladies of Israel, instead of a girdle of curious
needlework, are brought to make use of a cord ; as the vulgar translates
rent, a rag, or list of cloth, Isa, iii. 24 ; and sackcloth for a stomacher,
instead of silk. This is the sovereign act of God, as he is the Lord of the
world : Ps. Ixxi. 6, 7, ' Promotion comes neither from the east, nor from the
west, nor from the south, but God is Judge ; he pulls down one, and sets up
another.' He doth no wrong to any man : if he lets him languish out his
days in poverty and disgrace, if he gives or takes away, he meddles with
nothing but what is his own more than ours ; if he did dispense his benefits
equally to all, men would soon think it their due. The inequality and
changes preserve the notion of God's sovereignty, and correct our natural
unmindfulness of it ; if there were no changes, God would not be feared as
the King of all the earth, Ps. Iv. 19. To this might also be referred his invest-
ing some countries with greater riches in their bowels, and on the surface ;
the disposing some in the fruitful and pleasant regions of Canaan or Italy,
while he settles others in the icy and barren parts of the northern climates.
(8.) His sovereignty is manifest in the times and seasons of dispensing
his goods. He is Lord of the times when, as well as of the goods which, he
doth dispose of to any person ; these ' the Father hath put in his own
power,' Acts i. 7. As it was his sovereign pleasure to restore the kingdom
to Israel, so he would pitch upon the time when to do it, and would not have
his right invaded, so much as by a question out of curiosity. This disposing
of opportunities in many things, can be referred to nothing else but his
sovereign pleasure. Why should Christ come at the twilight and evening
of the world, at the fulness, and not at the beginning of time ? Why he
should be from the infancy of the world so long wrapped up in a promise,
and not appear in the flesh till the last times and grey hairs of the world,
when so many persons in all nations had been hurried out of the world, with-
out any notice of such a redeemer, what was this but his sovereign will ?
Why the Gentiles should be left so long in the devil's chains, wallowing in
the sink of their abominable superstitions, since God had declared his inten-
tion by the prophets, to call multitudes of them, and reject the Jews ; why
he should defer it so long, can be referred to nothing but the same cause.
What is the reason the veil continues so long upon the heart of the Jews,
that is promised one time or other to be, taken off? Why doth God delay
the accomplishment of those glorious predictions of the happiness and
interest of that people ? Is it because of the sin of their ancestors ? — a
reason that cannot bear much weight. If we cast it upon that account,
their conversion can never be expected, can never be effected ; if for the

s. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 449

sins of their ancestors, is it not also for their own sins ? Do their sins
grow less in number, or less venomous, or provoking in quality, by this
delay ? Is not their blasphemy of Christ as malicious, their hatred of him
as strong and rooted, as ever ? Do they not as much approve of the bloody
act of their ancestors, since so many ages are past, as their ancestors
did applaud it at the time of the execution ? Have they not the same
disposition and will, discovered sufficiently by the scorn of Christ, and of
those that profess his name, to act the same thing over again, were Christ
now in the same state in the world, and they invested with the same
power of government ? If their conversion were deferred one age after
the death of Christ for the sins of their preceding ancestors, is it to be
expected now, since the present generation of the Jews in all countries
have the sins of those remote, the succeeding, and their more immediate
ancestors lying upon them ? This, therefore, cannot be the reason ; but as
it was the sovereign pleasure of God to foretell his intention, to overcome
the stoutness of their hearts, so it is his sovereign pleasure that it shall not be
performed till ' the fulness of the Gentiles be come in,' Rom. xi. 25. As he
is the Lord of his own grace, so he is Lord of the time when to dispense
it. Why did God create the world in sis days, which he could have erected
and beautified in a moment ? Because it was his pleasure so to do. Why
did he frame the world when he did, and not many ages before ? Because
he is master of his own work. Why did he not resolve to bring Israel to
the fruition of Canaan till after four hundred years ? Why did he draw out
their deliverance to so long time after he began to attempt it ? Why such
a multitude of plagues upon Pharaoh to work it, when he could have cut
short the work by one mortal blow upon the tyrant and his accomplices ?
It was his sovereign pleasure to act so, though not without other reasons,
intelligible enough by looking into the story. Why doth he not bring man
to a perfection of stature in a moment after his birth, but let him continue
in a tedious infancy, in a semblance to beasts for want of an exercise of rea-
son ? Why doth he not bring this or that man, whom he intends for ser-
vice, to a fitness in an instant, but by long tracts of study, and through
meanders and labyrinths ? Why doth he transplant a hopeful person in his
youth to the pleasures of another world, and let another of an eminent holi-
ness continue in the misery of this, and wade through many floods of
afflictions ? What can we chiefly refer all these things to, but his sovereign
pleasure ? The times are determined by God, Acts xvii. 26.

3. The dominion of God is manifested as a governor, as well as a law-
giver and proprietor.

(1.) In disposing of states and kingdoms. Ps. Ixxv. 7, 'God is Judge,
he pulls down one, and sets up another.' Judge is to be taken, not in the
same sense that we commonly use the word for a judicial minister in a way
of trial, but for a governor ; as you know the extraordinary governors raised
up among the Jews were called judges, whence one entire book in the Old
Testament is so denominated, the Book of Judges. God hath a prerogative
to 'change times and seasons,' Dan. ii. 21, i.e. the revolutions of govern-
ment, whereby times are altered.* How many empires that have spread
their wings over a great part of the world, have had their carcases torn in
pieces, and unheard of nations plucked ofi" the wings of the Roman eagle,
after it had preyed upon many nations of the world ! And the Macedonian
empire was as the dew, that is dried up a short time after it falls. He
erected the Chaldean monarchy, used Nebuchadnezzar to overthrow and
punish the ungrateful Jews, and by a sovereign act gave a great parcel of
* Mr Mede in one of his Letters.

VOL. II. F f

450 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

land into his hands ; and what he thought was his right by conquest, was
God's donative to him. You may read the charter to Nebuchadnezzar,
whom he terms his servant, Jer. xxvii. 6, * And now I have given all those
lands,' — the lands are mentioned, ver. 3, — ' into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar
the king of Babylon, my servant.' Which decree he pronounceth after his
asserting his right of sovereignty over the whole earth, ver. 5. After that,
he puts a period to the Chaldean empire, and by the same sovereign authority
decrees Babylon to be a spoil to the nations of the north country, and
delivers her up as a spoil to the Persian, Jer. 1. 9, 10. And this for the mani-
festation of his sovereign dominion, that he was the ' Lord, that made peace,
and created evil,' Isa. xlv. 6, 7. God afterwards overthrows that by the
Grecian Alexander, prophesied of under the figure of a goat, with ' one horn
between his eyes,' Dan. viii. The swift current of his victories, as swift as
his motion, shewed it to be from an extraordinary hand of heaven, and not
either from the policy or strength of the Macedonian. His strength in the
prophet is described to be less, being but one hoi'n running against the Per-
sian, described under the figure of a ' ram with two horns.'* And himself
acknowledged a divine motion exciting him to that great attempt, when he
saw Joddus, the high priest, coming out in his priestly robes, to meet him
at his approach to Jerusalem, whom he was about to worship, acknowledg-
ing that the vision, which put him upon the Persian war, appeared to him
in such a garb. What was the reason Israel was rent from Judah, and both
split into two distinct kingdoms ? Because Kehoboam would not hearken
to sober and sound counsels, but follow the advice of upstarts. Whsit was
the reason he did not hearken to sound advice, since he had so advantageous
an education under his father Solomon, the wisest prince of the world ?
' The cause was from the Lord,' 1 Kings xii. 15, that he might perform
what he had before spoke. In this he acted according to his royal word ;
but in the first resolve he acted as a sovereign Lord, that had the disposal of
all nations in the world. And though Ahab had a numerous posterity,
seventy sons to inherit the throne after him, yet God by his sovereign
authority gives them up into the hands of Jehu, who strips them of their
lives and hopes together ; not a man of them succeeded in the throne, but
the crown is transferred to Jehu by God's disposal.

In wars, whereby flourishing kingdoms are overthrown, God hath the
chief hand; in reference to which it is observed, that in the two prophets,
Isaiah and Jeremiah, God is called the * Lord of hosts ' one hundred and
thirty times. It is not the sword of the captain, but the sword of the Lord,
bears the fii'st rank : * The sword of the Lord and of Gideon,' Judges vii. 18.
The sword of a conqueror is the sword of the Lord, and receives its charge
and commission from the great sovereign, Jer. xlvii. 6, 7. We are apt to
confine our thought to second causes, lay the fault upon the miscarriages of
persons, the ambition of the one, and the covetousness of another, and
rec^ard them not as the efi'ects of God's sovereign authority, linking separate
causes together to serve his own purpose. The skill of one man may lay
open the folly of a counsellor, an earthly force may break in pieces the power
of a mighty prince. But Job, in his consideration of those things, refers
the matter higher. Job xii. 18, 'He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth
their loins with a girdle.' ' He looseth the bonds of kings,' i. e. takes off
the yokes they lay upon their subjects, ' and girds their loins with a girdle ;'
a cord, as the vulgar; he lays upon them those fetters they framed for others,
such a girdle or band as is the mark of captivity, as the words, ver. 19, con-
firm it, ' He leads princes away spoiled, and overthrows the mighty.' God
* Josephus.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's DOiinaoN. 451

lifts up some to a great height, and casts down others to a disgraceful
rain. All those changes in the face of the world, the revolutions of empires,
the desolating and ravaging wars which are often immediately the birth of
the vice, ambition, and fury of princes, are the royal acts of God as governor
of the world. All government belongs to him, he is the fountain of aU the
great and petty dominions in the world, and therefore may place in them what
substitutes and vicegerents he pleaseth, as a prince may remove his officers
at pleasure, and take their commissions from them. The highest are settled
by God durante bene placito, and not quamdiu bene se gesserint. Those
princes that have been the glory of their country have swayed the sceptre
but a short time, when the more wolfish ones have remained longer in com-
mission, as God hath seen fit for the ends of his own sovereign government.
Now by the revolutions in the world, and changes in governors and govern-
ment, God keeps up the acknowledgment of his sovereignty, when he doth
arrest grand and public oflenders, that wear a crown by his providence, and
employ it by their pride against him that placed it there. When he arraigns
such by a signal hand from heaven, he makes them the public examples of
the rights of his sovereignty, declaring thereby that the cedars of Lebanon are
as much at his foot as the shrubs of the valley ; that he hath as sovereign
an authority over the throne in the palace as over the stool in the cottage.

(2.) The dominion of God is manifested in raising up and ordering the
spirits of men according to his pleasure. He doth, as the ' Father of spirits,'
communicate an influence to the spirits of men as well as an existence ; he
puts what inclinations he pleaseth into the will, stores it with what habits
he please, whether natural or supernatural, whereby it may be rendered more
ready to act according to the divine purpose. The will of man is a iinite
principle, and therefore subject to him who hath an infinite sovereignty over
all things ; and God having a sovereignty over the will in the manner of its
acting, causeth it to will what he wills, as to the outward act, and the out-
ward manner of performing it. There are many examples of this part of his
sovereignty. God, by his sovereign conduct, ordered Moses a protectoress
as soon as his parents had formed an ark of bulrushes, wherein to set him
floating on the river, Exod. ii. 3-6. They expose him to the waves, and
the waves expose him to the view of Pharaoh's daughter, whom God, by his
secret ordering her motion, had posted in that place ; and though she was
the daughter of a prince that inveterately hated the whole nation, and had
by various acts endeavoured to extirpate them, yet God inspires the royal
lady with sentiments of compassion to the forlorn infant, though she knew
him to be one of the Hebrews' children, ver. 6, /. e. one of that race whom
her father had devoted to the hands of an executioner, yet God, that doth by
his sovereignty rule over the spirits of all men, moves her to take that infant
into her protection, and nourish him at her own charge, give him a hberal
education, adopt him her son, who in time was to be the ruin of her race
and the saviour of his nation. Thus he appointed Cyrus to be his ' shep-
herd,' and gave him a pastoral spirit for the reformation of the city and
temple of Jerusalem, Isa. xliv. 28, and xlv. 5, tells them in the prophecy
that he had * girded ' him, though Cyrus had ' not known Lim,' i. e. God had
given him a military spirit and strength for so great an attempt, though he
did not know that he was acted by God for those divine purposes. And
when the time came for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt, the spirits of
the people were raised up, not by themselves, but by God: Ezrai. 5, '"VNTiose
spirit God had raised to go up.' And not only the spirit of Zerubbabel the
magistrate, and of Joshua the priest, but the spirit of all the people, from
the highest to the meanest that attended him, were acted by God, to strengthen

452 chaenock's woeks. [Ps. CIII. 19.

their hands and promote the work, Hag. i. 14, The spirits of men, even in
those works which are naturally desirable to them, as the restoration of the
city and rebuilding of the temple was to those Jews, are acted by God, as
the sovereign over them ; much more when the wheels of men's spirits are
lifted up above their ordinary temper and motion. It was this empire of
God good Nehemiah regarded as that v/hence he was to hope for success ;
he did not assure himself so much of it from the favour he had with the
king, nor the reasonableness of his intended petition, but the absolute power
God had over the heart of that great monarch, and therefore he supplicates
the heavenly before he petitioned the earthly throne : Nehem. ii. 4, ' So I
prayed to the God of heaven.' The heathens had some glance of this ; it is
an expression that Cicero hath somewhere, that the Roman commonwealth
was rather governed by the assistance of the supreme divinity over the hearts
of men, than by their own counsels and management. How often hath the
feeble courage of men been heightened to such a pitch as to stare death in
the face, which before were damped with the least thought or glance of it !
This is a fruit of God's sovereign dominion-

(8.) The dominion of God is manifest in restraining the furious passions
of men, and putting a block in their way. Sometimes God doth it by a
remarkable hand, as the Babel-builders were diverted from their proud
design by a sudden confusion of their language, and rendering it unintelligible
to one another ; sometimes by ordinary though unexpected means, as
when Saul, like a hawk, was ready to prey upon David, whom be had hunted
as a partridge upon the mountains, he had another object presented for his
arms and fury by the Philistines' sudden invasion of a part of his territory,
1 Sam. xxiii. 26-28. But it is chiefly seen by an inward curbing mutinous
affections, when there is no visible cause. What reason but this can be
rendered, why the nations bordering on Canaan, who bore no good will to
the Jews, but rather wished the whole race of them rooted out from the face
of the earth, should not invade their country, pillage their houses, and
plunder their cattle, while they' were left naked of any human defence, the
males being annually employed at one time at Jerusalem in worship ; what
reason can be rendered, but an invisible curb God put into their spirits ?
What was the reason not a man of all the buyers and sellers in the temple
should rise against our Saviour, M'hen with a high hand he began to whip
them out, but a divine bridle upon them ; though it appears by the question-
ing his authority, that there were Jews enough to have chased out him, and
his company ? John ii. 15, 18. What was the reason that, at the publishing
the gospel by the apostles at the first descent of the Spirit, those that had
used the Master so barbarously a few days before, were not all in a foam
against the servants, that by preaching that doctrine upbraided them with
the late murder ? Had they better sentiments of the Lord whom they had put
to death ? Were their natures grown tamer, and their malignity expelled ?
No ; but that sovereign who loosed the reins of their malicious corruption,
to execute the master for the purchase of redemption, curbed it from break-
ing out against the servants, to further the propagation of the doctrine of
redemption. He that restrains the roaring lion of hell, restrains also his
whelps on earth ; he and they must have a commission, before they can
put forth a finger to hurt, how malicious soever their nature and will be.
His empire reaches over the malignity of devils, as well as the nature of
beasts. The lions out of the den, as well as those in the den, are bridled
by him in favour of his Daniels. His dominion is above that of principali-
ties and powers, their decrees are at his mercy, whether they shall stand or
fall ; he hath a vote above their stiffest resolves. His single word, I will,

Ps. cm. 19.J god's dominion. 453

or I forbid, outweighs the most resolute purposes of all the mighty Nimrods
of the eai-th in their rendezvouses, and cabals in their associations and
counsels. Isa. viii. 9, 10, ' Associate yourselves, 0 ye people, and ye shall
be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought.'
' When the enemy shall come in like a flood,' with a violent and irresistible
force, intending nothing but ravage and desolation, ' the Spirit of the Lord
shall lift up a standard against them,' Isa. lis. 19, shall give a sudden
check and damp their spirits, and put them to a stand. When Laban
furiously pursued Jacob with an intent to do him an ill turn, God gave him
a command to do otherwise, Gen. xxxi. 24. Would Laban have respected
that command any more. than he did the light of nature, when he worshipped
idols, had not God exercised his authority, in inclining his will to observe
it, or laying restraints upon his natural inclinations, or denying his concourse
to the acting those ill intentions he had entertained ? The stilling the prin-
ciples of commotion in men, and the noise of the sea, are arguments of the
divine dominion ; neither the one nor the other is in the power of the most
sovereign prince without divine assistance. As no prince can command a
calm to a raging sea, so no prince can order stillness to a tumultuous people ;
they are both put together as equally parts of the divine prerogative, Ps.
Ixv. 7, which ' stills the noise of the sea, and tumults of the people.'
And David owns God's sovereignty more than his own, in * subduing the
people under him,' Ps. xviii. 47. In this his empire is illustrious : Ps.
xxix. 10, ' The Lord sitteth upon the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth king for
ever ; a king impossible to be deposed ; not only on the natural floods of
the sea, that would naturally overflow the world, but the metaphorical floods
or tumults of the people, the sea in every wicked man's heart, more apt to
rage morally than the sea to foam naturally. If you will take the interpre-
tation of an angel, waters and floods, in the prophetic syle, signify the incon-
stant and mutable people: Eev. xvii. 1, 5, ' The waters where the whore
sits, are people, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.' So the angel
expounds to John the vision which he saw, verse 1. The heathens acknow-
ledged this part of God's sovereignty in the inward restraints of men. Those
apparitions of the gods and goddesses, in Homer, to several of the great
men when they were in a fury, were nothing else, in the judgment of the
wisest philosophers, than an exercise of God's sovereignty in quelling their
passions, checking their uncomely intentions, and controlling them in that
which their rage prompted them to. And indeed did not God set bounds
to the storms in men's hearts, we should soon see the funeral, not only of
religion, but civility ; the one would be blown out, and the other torn up by
the roots.

(4.) The dominion of God is manifest in defeating the purposes and de-
vices of men. God often makes a mock of human projects, and doth as
well accompUsh that which they never dreamt of, as disappoint that which
they confidently designed. He is present at all cabals, laughs at men's
formal and studied counsels, bears a hand over every egg they hatch, thwarts
their best compacted designs, supplants their contrivances, breaks the
engines they have been many years rearing, diverts the intentions of men,
as a mighty wind blows an arrow from the mark which the archer intended :
Job. V. 12, ' He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands
caunot perform their enterprise. He taketh the wise in their own crafti-
ness, and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.' Enemies often
draw an exact scheme of their intended proceedings, marshal their com-
panies, appoint their rendezvous, think to make but one morsel of those
they hate ; God by his sovereign dominion turns the scale, changeth the

454 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

gloominess of tbe oppressed into a sunshine, and the enemies' sunshine into
darkness. When the nations were gathered together against Zion, and said,
* Let her be defiled, and let our eye look upon Zion,' Micah iv. 11, what doth
God do in this case ? Ver. 12, ' He shall gather them,' i. e. those conspir-
ing nations, ' as sheaves into the floor.' Then he sounds a trumpet to Zion :
' Arise and thresh, 0 daughter of Zion ; for I will make thj horn iron, and
thy hoofs brass ; and thou shalt beat in pieces many people : and I will
consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their substance unto the Lord of
the whole earth.' I will make them, and their counsels, them and their
strength, the monuments and signal marks of my empire over the whole
earth.

When you see the cunningest designs baffled by some small thing inter-
vening, when you see men of profound wisdom infatuated, mistake their
way, and ' grope in the noonday as in the night,' Job. v. 14, bewildered in
a plain way ; when you see the hopes of mighty attempters dashed into
despair, their triumphs into funerals, and their joyful expectations into sor-
rowful disappointments ; when you see the weak devoted to destruction
victorious, and the most presumptuous defeated in their purposes : then read
the divine dominion in the desolation of such devices. How often doth God
take away the heart and spirit of grand designs, and burst a mighty wheel,
by snatching but one man out of the world ! How often doth he * cut otf
the spirits of princes,' Ps. Ixsvi. 12, either from the world by death, or from
the execution of their projects by some unforeseen interruption, or from
favouring those contrivances, which before they cherished, by a change of
their minds ! How often hath confidence in God, and religious prayer,
edged the weakest and smallest number of weapons, to make a carnage of
the carnally confident ! How often hath presumption been disappointed,
and the contemned enemy rejoiced in the spoils of the proud expectant of
victory. Phydias made the image of Nemesis or revenge, at Marathon, of
that marble which the haughty Persians, despising the weakness of the
Athenian forces, brought with them to erect a trophy for an expected but an
ungained victory.* Haman's neck, by a sudden turn, was in the halter, when
the Jews' necks were designed to the block. Juhan designed the overthrow
of all the Christians, just before his breast was pierced by an unexpected
arrow. The powder-traitors were all ready to give fire to the mine, when
the sovereign hand of heaven snatched away the match. Thus the great
Lord of the world cuts off men on the pinnacle of their designs, when they
seem to threaten heaven and earth ; puts out the candle of the wicked,
which they thought to use to light them to the execution of their purposes ;
turns their own counsels into a curse to themselves, and a blessing to their
adversaries, and makes his greatest enemies contribute to the eff'ecting of his
purposes. How may we take notice of God's absolute disposal of things in
private affairs, when we see one man with a small measure of prudence, and
little industry, have great success, and others with a greater measure of
wisdom, and greater toil and labour, find their enterprises melt between
their fingers ! It was Solomon's observation, ' that the race was not to
the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither bread to the wise, nor riches
to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill,' Eccles. ix. 11.

Many things might interpose to stop the swift in his race, and damp the
courage of the most valiant. Things do not happen according to men's
ability, but according to the overruling authority of God. God never yet
granted man the dominion of his own way, no more than to be lord of his
own time : * The way of man is not in himself, it is not in him that walketh
* Causin, Symb. lib. ii. cap. Ixv.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 455

to direct his steps,' Jer. x. 23. He hath given man a power of acting, but
not the sovereignty to command success. He makes even those things
which men intended for their security to turn to their ruin. Pilate deUvered
up Christ, to be accounted a friend to Ctesar, and Cassar soon after proves
an enemy to him, removes him from his government, and sends him into
banishment. The Jews imagined, by the crucifying Christ, to keep the
Roman ensigns at a distance from them, and this hasted their march, Ly
God's sovereign disposal, which ended in a total desolation. ' He makes
the judges fools,' Job xii. 17, by taking away his light from their under-
standing, and suffering them to go on in the vanity of their own spirits,
that his sovereignty in the management of things may be more apparent ;
for then he is known to be Lord, when he ' snares the wicked in the work
of his own hands,' Ps. ix. 16. You have seen much of this doctrine in
your experience^ and, if my judgment fail me not, you will yet see much more.

(5.) The dominion of God is manifest in sending his judgments upon
whom he pleases. He kills and makes alive, he wounds and heals whom
he pleaseth. His thunders are his own, and he may cast them upon what
subjects he thinks good. He hath a right in a way of justice to punish all
men, he hath his choice in a way of sovereignty to pick out whom he please
to make the examples of it. Might not some nations be as wicked as those
of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet have not been scorched with the like dreadful
flames ? Zoar was untouched, while the other cities her neighbours were
burned to ashes. Were there never any places and persons successors in
Sodom's guilt ? Yet those only by his sovereign authority are separated by
him, to be the examples of his eternal vengeance, Jude 7. Why are not
sinners as Sodom, like as those ancient ones, scalded to death by the like
fiery drops? It is because it is his pleasure ; and the same reason is to be
rendered why he would in the way of justice cut off the Jews for their sins,
and leave the Gentiles untouched in the midst of their idolatries. When
the church was consumed because of her iniquities, they acknowledged God's
sovereignty in this : Isa. Ixiv. 7, 8, ' We are the clay, and thou art our
potter, and we all the work of thy hands,' thou hast a liberty either to break
or preserve us. Judgments move according to God's order. When the
sword hath a charge against Ashkelon and the sea shore, thither it must
march, and touch not any other place or person as it goes, though there may
be demerit enough for it to punish : Jer. xlvii. 6, 7, when the prophet had
spake to the sword, ' 0 thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere
thou be quiet ? Put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still.' The
prophet answers for the sword, ' How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath
given it a charge against Ashkelon ? there hath he appointed it.' If he
hath appointed a judgment against London or Westminster, or any other
place, there it shall drop, there it shall pierce, and in no other place with-
out a like charge. God as a sovereign gives instructions to every judgment,
when and against whom it shall march, and what cities, what persons it
shall arrest, and he is punctually obeyed by them as a sovereign Lord. All
creatures stand ready for his call, and are prepared to be executioners of
his vengeance, when he speaks the word ; they are his hosts by creation,
and in array for his service ; at the sound of his trumpet, or beat of his
drum, they troop together with their arms in their hands, to put his orders
exactly in execution.

(6.) The dominion of God is manifest in appointing to every man his
calling and station in the world. If the hairs of every man's head fall
under his sovereign care, the calling of every man, wherein he is to glorify
God, and serve his generation, which is of greater concern than the hairs of

456 '' chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

the head, falls under his dominion. He is the master of the great family,
and divides to every one his work as he pleaseth. The whole work of the
Messiah, the time of every action, as well as the hour of his passion, was
ordered and appointed by God. The separation of Paul to the preaching
of the gospel, was by the sovereign disposal of God, Eom. i. 1. By the
same exercise of his authority, that he ' sets every man the bounds of his
habitation,' Acts xvii. 26, he prescribes also to him the nature of his work.
He that ordered Adam, the father of mankind, his work, and the place of it,
the dressing the garden. Gen. ii. 15, doth not let any of his posterity be
their own choosers, without an influence of his sovereign direction on them.
Though our callings are our work, yet they are by God's order, wherein we
are to be faithful to our great master and ruler.

(7.) The dominion of God is manifest in the means and occasions of men's
conversion. Sometimes one occasion, sometimes another, one word lets a
man go, another arrests him, and brings him before God and his own con-
science ; it is as God gives out the order. He lets Paul be a prisoner at
Jerusalem, that his cause should not be determined there, moves him to
appeal to Caesar, not only to make him a prisoner but a preacher in Caesar's
court, and render his chains an occasion to bring in a harvest of converts in
Nero's palace: Philip, i. 12, 13, his bonds in or for Christ are * manifest in
all the palace ;' not the bare knowledge of his bonds, but the sovereign
design of God in those bonds, and the success of them ; the bare knowledge
of them would not make others more confident for the gospel, as it follows,
ver. 14, without a providential design of them. Onesimus, running from his
master, is guided by God's sovereign order into Paul's company, and thereby
into Christ's arms, and he who came a fugitive returns a Christian, Philem.
10, 15. Some by a strong affliction have had, by the divine sovereignty,
their understandings awakened to consider, and their wills spirited to con-
version. Monica being called Meribibula or toss-pot, was brought to con-
sider her way, and reform her life. A word hath done that at one time
which hath often before fallen without any fruit. Many have come to suck
in the eloquence of the minister, and have found in the honey for their ears
a sting for the consciences. Austin had no other intent in going to hear
Ambrose, but to have a taste of his famous oratory; but while Ambrose
spake a language to his ear, God spake a heavenly dialect to his heart. No
reason can be rendered of the order, and timing, and influence of those
things, but the sovereign pleasure of God, who will attend one occasion and
season with his blessing and not another.

(8.) The dominion of God is manifest in disposing of the lives of men.
He keeps the key of death, as well as that of the womb, in his own hand ;
he hath given man a life, but not power to dispose of it or lay it down at
his pleasure ; and therefore he hath ordered man not to murder, not another,
not himself; man must expect his call and grant to dispose of the life of his
body. Why doth he cut the thread of this man's life, and spin another's
out to a longer term ? "Why doth one die an inglorious death, and another
more honourable ? One silently drops away in the multitude, while another
is made a sacrifice for the honour of God, or the safety of his country. This
is a mark of honour he gives to one and not to another : Philip, i. 29, ' To
you it is given.' The manner of Peter's death was appointed, John xxi. 19.
Why doth a small and slight disease, against the rules of physic, and the
judgment of the best practitioners, dislodge one man's soul out of his body,
while a greater disease is mastered in another, and discharges the patient to
enjoy himself a longer time in the land of the Hving ? Is it the efiect of
means so much as of the sovereign disposer of all things ? If means only

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 457

did it, the same means would alway work tlae same effect, and sooner master
a dwarfish than a giant-like distemper. ' Our times are only in God's hands,'
Ps. xxxi. 15, either to cut short or continue long. As his sovereignty
made the first marriage knot, so he reserves the sole authority to himself to
make the divorce.

4. The dominion of God is manifest in his being a redeemer, as well as
lawgiver, proprietor, and governor. His sovereignty was manifest in the
creation, in bestowing upon this or that part of matter a form more excellent
than upon another. He was a lawgiver to men and angels, and prescribed
them rules according to the counsel of his own will. These were his crea-
tures, and perfectly at his disposal ; but in redemption a sovereignty is
exercised over the Son, the second person in the Trinity, one equal with the
Father in essence and works, by whom the worlds were created, and by
whom they did consist. The whole gospel is nothing else but a declaration
of his sovereign pleasure concerning Christ, and concerning us in him ; it is
therefore called ' the mystery of his will,' Eph. i. 9 ; the will of God as
distinct from the will of Christ, a purpose in himself, not moved thereunto
by any ; the whole design was framed in the Deity, and as much the purpose
of his sovereign will as the contrivance of his immense wisdom. He decreed
in his own pleasure to have the second person assume our nature, for to
dehver mankind from that misery whereinto it was fallen. The whole of
the gospel and the privileges of it are in that chapter resolved into the will
and pleasure of God.

God is therefore called ' the head of Christ,' 1 Cor. xi. 3. As Christ is
superior to all men, and the man superior to the woman, so is God superior to
Christ, and of a more eminent dignity ; in regard of the constituting him
mediator, Christ is subject to God, as the body to the head. Head is a title
of government and sovereignty, and magistrates were called the heads of the
people. As Christ is the head of man, so is God the head of Christ ; and
as man is subject to Christ, so is Christ subject to God ; not in regard of
the divine nature, wherein there is an equality, and consequently no domi-
nion of jurisdiction, nor only in his human nature, but in the economy of a
Ptedeemer, considered as one designed, and consenting to be incarnate, and
take our flesh ; so that after this agreement God had a sovereign right to
dispose of him according to the articles consented to. In regard of his
understanding, and the advaiftage he was to bring to the elect of God upon
the earth, he calls God by the solemn title of his Lord, in that prophetic
Psalm of him : Ps. xvi. 2, * 0 my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord,
Thou art my Lord ; my goodness extends not unto thee, but unto the saints
that are in the earth.' It seems to be the speech of Christ in heaven,
mentioning the saints on earth as at a distance from him. I can add
nothing to the glory of thy majesty, but the whole fruit of my mediation
and sufferings will redound to the saints on earth ; and it may be observed
that God is called the Lord of hosts in the evangeUcal prophets Isaiah,
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, more in reference to this affair of redemp-
tion, and the deliverance of the church, than for any other works of his
providence in the world.

(1.) This sovereignty of God appears in requiring satisfaction for the sin
of man. Had he indulged man after his fall, and remitted his offence with-
out a just compensation for the injury he had received by his rebellion, his
authority had been viUfied, man would always have been attempting against
his jurisdiction, there would have been a continual succession of rebellions
on man's part ; and if a continual succession of indulgences on God's part,
he had quite disowned his authority over man, and stripped himself of the

458 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

flower of his crown ; satisfaction must have been required, some time or
other, from the person thus rebelling, or some other in his stead ; and to
require it after the first act of sin was more preservative to the right of the
divine sovereignty, than to do it after a multitude of repeated revolts. God
must have laid aside his authority, if he had laid aside wholly the exacting
punishment for the offence of man.

(2.) This sovereignty of God appears in appointing Christ to this work of
redemption. His sovereignty was before manifest over angels and men by
the right of creation, there was nothing wanting to declare the highest charge
of it but his ordering his own Son to become a mortal creature ; the Lord of
all things to become lower than those angels, that had, as well as all other
things, received their being and beauty from him, and to be reckoned in his
death among the dust and refuse of the world. He by whom God created
all things not only became a man, but a crucified man by the will of his
Father : Gal. i. 4, ' Who gave himself for our sins, according to the will of
God ' ; to which may refer that expression, Prov. viii. 22, of his being ' pos-
sessed by God in the beginning of his way.' Possession is the dominion of
a thing invested in the possessor ; he was possessed, indeed, as a Son by
eternal generation. He was possessed also in the beginning of his way or
works of creation as a mediator by special constitution ; to this the expres-
sion seems to refer, if you read on to the end of verse 31, wherein Christ
speaks of his ' rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth,' the earth of the
great God, who had designed him to this special work of redemption. He
was a Son by nature, but a mediator by divine will, in regard of which Christ
is often called God's servant, which is a relation to God as a Lord. God
being the Lord of all things, the dominion of all things inferior to him is
inseparable from him, and in this regard the whole of what Christ was to do,
and did actually do, was acted by him as the will of God, and is expressed
so by himself in the prophecy : Ps. xl. 7, ' Lo, I come : ' ver. 8, ' I delight
to do thy will,' which are put together, Heb. x. 7, ' Lo, I come to do thy
will, 0 God.' The designing Christ to do this work was an act of mercy,
but founded on his sovereignty. His compassionate bowels might have
pitied us without his being sovereign, but without it could not have relieved
us. It was the counsel of his own will, as well as of his bowels. None
was his counsellor or persuader to that mercy he shewed : Rom. xi. 34,
* Who hath been his counsellor ? ' For it refers to that mercy, in ' sending
the deliverer out of Zion,' ver. 26, as well as to other things the apostle had
been discoursing of. As God was at liberty to create or not to create, so he
was at liberty to redeem or not to redeem, and at his liberty whether to
appoint Christ to this work, or not to call him out to it. In giving this
order to his Son, his sovereignty was exercised in a higher manner than in
all the orders and instructions he hath given out to men or angels, and all
the employments he ever sent them upon. Christ hath names which signify
an authority over him. He is called an angel, and a messenger, Mai. iii. 1 ;
an apostle, Heb. iii. 1, declaring thereby that God hath as much authority
over him as over the angels, sent upon his messages ; or [he] over the
apostles commissioned by his authority, as he was considered in the quality
of mediator.

(3.) This sovereignty of God appears in transferring our sins upon Christ.
The supreme power in a nation can only appoint or allow of a commutation
of punishment ; it is a part of sovereignty to transfer the penalty due to the
crime of one upon another, and substitute a sufferer, with the sufferer's own
consent, in the place of a criminal, whom he had a mind to deliver from a
deserved punishment. God transferred the sins of men upon Christ, and

Ps. cm. 19.j god's dominion. 459

inflicted on him a punishment for them. He summed up the debts of man,
charged them upon the score of Christ, imputing to him the guilt, and in-
flicting upon him the penalty : Isa. liii. 6, ' The Lord hath laid upon him
the iniquity of us all ;' he made them all to meet upon his back : ' He hath
made him to be sin for us,' 2 Cor. v. 21. He was made so by the sovereign
pleasure of God. A punishment for sin, as most understand it, which could
not be righteously inflicted, had not sin been first righteously imputed by the
consent of Christ, and the order of the Judge of the world. This imputation
could be the immediate act of none but God, because he was the sole credi-
tor. A creditor is not bound to accept of another's suretyship, but it is at
his liberty whether he will or no ; and when he doth accept of him, he may
challenge the debt of him, as if he were the debtor himself. Christ made
himself sin for us by a voluntary submission, and God made him sin for us
by a full imputation, and treated him penally, as he would have done those
sinners in whose stead he suffered. Without this act of sovereignty in God
■we had for ever perished ; for, if we could suppose Christ laying down his
life for us without the pleasure and order of God, he could not have been
Baid to have borne our punishment. What could he have undergone in his
humanity, but a temporal death ? But more than this was due to us, even
the wrath of God, which far exceeds the calamity of a mere bodily death. The
soul being principal in the crime, was to be principal in the punishment.
The wrath of God could not have dropped upon his soul, and rendered it so
full of agonies, without the hand of God. A creature is not capable to reach
the soul, neither as to comfort nor terror ; and the justice of God could not
have made him a sufferer, if it had not first considered him a sinner by im-
putation or by inherency, and actual commission of a crime in his own per-
son. The latter was far from Christ, who was holy, harmless, and undefiled.
He must be considered then, in the other state of imputation, which could
not be without a sovereign appointment, or at least concession, of God ; for
without it, he could have had no more authority to lay down his life for us,
than Abraham could have had to have sacrificed his son, or any man to ex-
pose himself to death, without a call ; nor could any plea have been entered
in the court of heaven, either by Christ for us, or by us for ourselves ; and
though the death of so great a person had been meritorious in itself, it had
not been meritorious for us or accepted for us, Christ is ' delivered up ' by
him, Rom. viii. 32, in every part of that condition wherein he was and suf-
fered, and to that end, that ' we might become the righteousness of God in
him,' 2 Cor. v. 21, that we might have the righteousness of him that was
God imputed to us, or that we might have a righteousness as great, and
proportioned to the righteousness of God, as God required. It was an
act of divine sovereignty to account him that was righteous a sinner in our
stead, and to account us, who were sinners, righteous upon the merit of his
death.

(4.) This was done by the command of God, by God as a lawgiver, hav-
ing the supreme legislative and preceptive authority ; in which respect the
whole work of Christ is said to be an answer to a law, not one given to him,
but put into his heart, as the law of nature was in the heart of man at first :
Ps. xl. 7, 8, ' Thy law is within my heart.' This law was not the law of
nature or moral law, though that was also in the heart of Christ, but the
command of doing those things which were necessary for our salvation, and
not a command so much of doing, as of dying. The moral law in the heart
of Christ would have done us no good without the mediatory law ; we had
been where we were by the sole observance of the precepts of the moral law,
without his suffering the penalty of it. The law in the heart of Christ was

460 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

the law of suffering or dying, the doing that for us by his death, which the
blood of sacrifices was unable to effect. Legal ' sacrifices thou wouldest not ;
thy law is within my heart,' i. e. thy law ordered me to be a sacrifice. It
was that law, his obedience to which was principally accepted and esteemed,
and that was principally his passive, his obedience to death, Philip, ii. 8.
This was the special command received from God, that he should die, John
X. 18. It is not so clearly manifested when this command was given,
whether after the incarnation of Christ, or at the point of his constitution as
mediator, upon the transaction between the Father and the Son concerning
the affair of redemption : ' The promise was given before the world began,'
Titus i. 2. Might not the precepts be given before the world began, to Christ,
as considered in the quality of mediator and redeemer ? Precepts and pro-
mises usually attend one another; every covenant is made up of both.
Christ, considered here as the Son of God in the divine nature, was not cap-
able of a command or promise, but considered in the relation of mediator
between God and man, he was capable of both ; promises of assistance were
made before his actual incarnation, of which the prophets are full. Why
not precepts for his obedience, since long before his incarnation this was his
speech in the prophet. Thy law is within my heart ? However, a command,
a law it was, which is a fruit of the divine sovereignty ; that, as the sove-
reignty of God was impeached and violated by the disobedience of Adam, it
might be owned and vindicated by the obedience of Christ ; that, as we fell
by disloyalty to it, we might rise by the highest submission to it in another
head, infinitely superior in his person to Adam, by whom we fell.

(5.) This sovereignty of God appears in exalting Christ to such a sove-
reign dignity as our redeemer. Some indeed say, that this sovereignty of
Christ's human nature was natural, and the right of it resulted from its
union with the divine, as a lady of mean condition, when espoused and mar-
ried to a prince, hath by virtue of that a natural right to some kind of juris-
diction over the whole kingdom, because she is one with the king.* But to
waive this, the Scripture placeth wholly the conferring such an authority
upon the pleasure and will of God. As Christ was a gift of God's sovereign
will to us, so this was a gift of God's sovereign will to Christ : Mat. xxviii.
28, ' All power is given me ;' and he ' gave him to be head over all things
to the church ;' Eph. i. 22, ' God gave him a name above every name,'
Philip, ii. 9 ; and therefore his throne he sits upon is called ' the throne of
his Father,' E,ev. iii. 31 ; and he ' committed all judgments to the Son,' i. e.
all government and dominion, an empire in heaven and earth, John v. 22, and
that ' because he is the Son of man,' ver. 27, which may be understood, that
the Father hath given him authority to exercise that judgment and govern-
ment as the Son of man, which he originally had as the Son of God ; or
rather, because he became a servant and humbled himself to death, he gives
him this authority as the reward of his obedience and humiUty, conformable
to Philip, ii. 9. This is an act of the high sovereignty of God, to obscure
his own authority in a sense, and take into association with him, or vicarious
subordination to him, the human nature of Christ as united to the divine,
not only lifting it above the heads of all the angels, but giving that person
in our nature an empire over them, whose nature was more excellent than
ours. Yea, the sovereignty of God appears in the whole management of this
kingly office of Christ ; for it is managed, in every part of it, according to
God's order : Ezek, xxxvii. 24, 25, ' David my servant shall be king over
them : and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.' He shall be a
prince over them, but my servant in that principality, in the exercise and
* Lessius, de perfect, divin. lib. x. p. 65.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion, 461

duration of it. The sovereignty of God is paramount in all that Christ
hath done as a priest, or shall do as a king.

V. The use.

1. For instruction.

1. How great is the contempt of this sovereignty of God. Man naturally
would be free from God's empire, to be a slave under the dominion of his
own lust. The sovereignty of God as a lawgiver is most abhorred by man,
Lev. xxvi. 43. The Israelites, the best people in the world, were apt by
nature not only to despise, but * abhor his statutes.' There is not a law of
God but the corrupt heart of man hath an abhorrency of. How often do
men wish that God had not enacted this or that law that goes against the
grain, and in wishing so, wish that he were no sovereign, or not such a
sovereign as he is in his own nature, but one according to their corrupt
model. This is the great quarrel between God and man, whether he or they
shall be the sovereign ruler. He should not by the will of man rule in any
one village in the world ; God's vote should not be predominant in any one
thing. There is not a law of his but is exposed to contempt by the per-
verseness of man : Prov. i. 21, ' Ye have set at nought all my counsel, and
would have none of my reproof.' Septuagint, ' Ye have made all my
counsels without authority.' The nature of man cannot endure one precept
of God, nor one rebuke from him ; and for this cause God is at the expense
of judgments in the world, to assert his own empire to the teeth and con-
sciences of men : Ps. lix. 13, * Lord, consume them in wrath ; and let them
know that God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth.' The dominion of
God is not slighted by any creature of this world but man ; all others
observe it by observing his order ; whether in their natural motions or pre-
ternatural irruptions, they punctually enact according to their commission.
Man only speaks a dialect against the strain of the whole creation, and hath
none to imitate him among all the creatures in heaven and earth, but only
among those in hell. Man is more impatient of the yoke of God than of
the yoke of man. There are not so many rebellions committed by inferiors
against their superiors and fellow- creatures as are committed against God.
A willing and easy sinning, is an equalling the authority of God to that of
man : Hosea vi. 7, ' They, like men, have transgressed my covenant.'
They have made no more account of breaking my covenant than if they had
broken some league or compact made with a mere man, so slightly do they
esteem the authority of God.* Such a disesteem of the divine authority is
a virtual undeifying of him. To slight his sovereignty, is to stab his deity ;
since the one cannot be preserved without the support of the other, his life
would expire with his authority. How base and brutish is it for vile dust
and mouldering clay, to lift up itself against the majesty of God, whose throne
is in the heavens, who sways his sceptre over all parts of the world ; a
majesty before whom the devils shake, and the highest cherubims tremble.
It is as if the thistle, that can presently be trod down by the foot of a wild
beast, should think itself a match for the cedar of Lebanon, as the phrase
is, 2 Kings xiv. 9.

Let us consider this in general, and also in the ordinary practice of men.

First, In general.

(1.) All sin in its nature is a contempt of the divine dominion. As every
act of obedience is a confirmation of the law, and consequently a subscrip-
tion to the authority of the lawgiver, Deut. xxvii. 26, so every breach of it
is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the lawgiver ; setting up our will
* Munster.

462 chaenock's woeks. [Ps. CIII. 19.

against the will of God is an articling against his authority, as setting up
our reason against the methods of God is an articling against his wisdom ;
the intendment of every act of sin is to wrest the sceptre out of God's hand.
The authority of God is the first attribute in the Deity which it directs its
edge against ; it is called therefore a ' transgression of his law,' 1 John
iii. 4. And therefore a shght or neglect of the majesty of God, and the not
keeping his commands, is called a * forgetting God,' Deut. viii. 11, i.e. a
forgetting him to be our absolute Lord. As the first notion we have of
God as a creator is that of his sovereignty, so the first perfection that sin
struck at in the violation of the law, was his sovereignty as a lawgiver.
* Breaking the law' is a ' dishonouring God,' Rom. ii, 23, a snatching off
his crown ; to obey our own wills before the will of God, is to prefer our-
selves as our own sovereigns before him. Sin is a wrong and injury to God,
not in his essence, — that is above the reach of a creature, — nor in anything
profitable to him, or pertaining to his own intrinsic advantage ; not an
injury to God in himself, but in his authority, in those things which pertain
to his glory, a disowning his due right, and not using his goods according to
his will. Thus the whole world may be called, as God calls Chaldea, * a
land of rebels;' Jer. 1. 21, ' Go up against the land of Merathaim,' or
' rebels ;' rebels not against the Jews, but against God. The mighty
opposition in the heart of man to the supremacy of God, is discovered
emphatically by the apostle, Rom. viii. 7, in that expression, ' The carnal
mind is enmity against God,' i. e. against the authority of God ; because
' it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.' It refuseth
not subjection to this or that part, but to the whole, to every mark of divine
authority in it ; it will not lay down its arms against it, nay, it cannot but
stand upon its terms against it ; the law can no more be fulfilled by a carnal
mind, than it can be disowned by a sovereign God. God is so holy, that
he cannot alter a righteous law ; and man is so averse, that he cares not for,
nay, cannot fulfil, one tittle, so much doth the nature of man swell against
the majesty of God. Now an enmity to the law, which is in every sin,
implies a perversity against the authority of God that enacted it.

(2.) All sin in its nature is the despoiling God of his sole sovereignty,
which was probably the first thing the devil aimed at. That pride was the
sin of the devil, the Scripture gives us some account of, when the apostle
adviseth not a novice, or one that hath but lately embraced the faith, to be
chosen a bishop : 1 Tim. iii. 6, ' Lest, being lifted up with pride, he fall
into the condemnation of the devil ;' lest he fall into the same sin for which
the devil was condemned. But in what particular thing this pride was
manifest is not so easily discernible. The ancients generally conceived it
to be an affecting the throne of God, grounding it on Isaiah xiv. 12, ' How
art thou fallen, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning ! for thou hast said in thy
heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of
God.' It is certain the prophet speaks there of the king of Babylon, and
taxeth him for his pride, and gives to him the title of Lucifer, perhaps liken-
ing him in his pride to the devil ; and then it notes plainly the particular sin
of the devil, attempting a share in the sovereignty of God. And some
strengthen their conjecture from the name of the archangel who contended
against Satan, Jude 9, which is Michael; which signifies, Who as God 9 or
Who like God ? the name of the angel giving the superiority to God, inti-
mating the contrarj^ disposition in the devil, against whom he contended.
It is likely his sin was an affecting an equality with God in empire, or a
freedom from the sovereign authority of God, because he imprinted such a
kind of persuasion on man at his first temptation, ' Ye shall be as gods,'

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 463

Gen. iii. 5 ; and though it be restrained to the matter of knowledge, yet
that being a fitness for government, it may be extended to that also. But
it is plainly a persuading them, that they might be in some sort equal with
God, and independent on him as their superior. What he had found so
fatal to himself, he imagined would have the same success in the ruin of
man. And since the devil hath in all ages of the world usurped a worship
to himself, which is only due to God, and would be served by man, as if he
were the god of the world ; since all his endeavour was to be worshipped
as the supreme god on earth, it is not unreasonable to think that he invaded
the supremacy of God in heaven, and endeavoured to be like the Most High
before his banishment, as he hath attempted to be like the Most High since.
And since the devil and antichrist are reputed by John in the Revelation to
be so near of kin, and so like in disposition, why might not that which is
the sin of antichrist, the image of him, be also the sin of Satan, * to exalt
himself above all that is called God,' 2 Thes. ii. 4, and ' sit as God in his
temple,' affecting a partnership in his throne and worship ? Whether it was
this, or attempting an unaccountable dominion over created things, or be-
cause he was the prime angel, and the most illustriuus of that magnificent
corporation, he might think himself fit to reign with God over all things
else. Or if his sin were envy, as some think, at the felicity of man in
paradise, it was still a quarrelling with God's dominion, and right of dispos-
ing his own goods and favours ; he is therefore called Belial: 2 Cor. vi. 14,
15, ' What concord hath Christ with Belial?' i.e. with the devil, one without
yoke, as the word Belial signifies.

(3.) It is more plain that this was the sin of Adam. The first act of
Adam was to exercise a lordship over the lower creatures, in giving names
to them, a token of dominion. Gen. ii. 19. The next was to aftect a lord-
ship over God, in rebelling against him. After he had writ the first mark
of his own delegated dominion in the names he gave the creatures, and
owned their dependence on him as their governor, he would not acknow-
ledge his own dependence on God. As soon as the Lord of the world had
put him into possession of the power he had allotted him, he attempted to
strip his Lord of that which he had reserved to himself. He was not con-
tent to lay a yoke upon the other creatures, but desirous to shake off the
divine yoke from himself, and be subject to none but his own will. Hence
Adam's sin is more particularly called ' disobedience,' Rom. v. 19. For in
the eating the apple there was no moral evil in itself, but a contradiction to
the positive command and order of God, whereby he did disown God's right
of commanding him, or reserving anything from him to his own use. The
language all his posterity speaks, ' Let us break his bands, and cast away
his cords from us,' Ps. ii. 3, was learned from Adam in that act of his.
The next act we read of was that of Cain's murdering Abel, which was an
invading God's right, in assuming an authority to dispose the life of his
brother, a life which God had given him, and reserved the period of it in his
own hands. And he persists in the same usurpation when God came to
examine him, and ask him where his brother was. How scornful was his
answer : Gen. iv. 9, * Am I my brother's keeper ?' As much as if he had
said. What have you to do to examine me ? Or, What obligation is there
upon me to render an account of him ? Or, as one saith,* it is as much as
if he had said. Go look [for] him yourself. The sovereignty of God did not
remain undisturbed. As soon as ever it appeared in creation, the devils
rebelled against it in heaven, and man would have banished it from the
earth.

* Trap, in loc.

464 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

(4.) The sovereignty of God hath not been less invaded by the usurpa-
tions of men. One single order of the Roman episcopacy hath endeavoured
to usurp the prerogatives of God. The pope will prohibit what God hath
allowed, — the marriage of priests, the receiving of the cup as well as of the
bread in the sacrament, the eating of this or that sort of meat at special
times, meats which God hath sanctified, and forbid them, too, upon pain of
damnation. It is an invasion of God's right to forbid the use of what God
hath granted, as though the earth, and the fulness thereof, were no longer
the Lord's, but the pope's; much more to forbid what God hath commanded,
as if Christ overreached his own authority when he enjoined all to drink of
the sacramental wine, as well as eat of the sacramental bread. No lord but
will think his right usurped by that steward who shall permit to others what
his lord forbids, and forbid that which his master allows, and act the lord
instead of the servant. Add to this the pardon of many sins, as if he had
the sole key to the treasures of divine mercy, the disposing of crowns and
dominions at his pleasure ; as if God had divested himself of the title of
King of kings, and transferred it upon the see of Rome. The allowing
public stews, dispensing with incestuous marriages, as if God had acted
more the part of a tyrant than of a righteous sovereign in forbidding them ;
depriving the Jews of the propriety in their estates upon their conversion to
Christianity, as if the pilfering men's goods were the way to teach them self-
denial, the first doctrine of Christian religion, and God shall have no honour
from the Jew without a breach of his law by theft from the Christian ;
granting many years' indulgences upon slight performances, the repeating
so many Ave Marias and Paternosters in a day, canonising saints, claiming
the keys of heaven, and disposing of the honours and glory of it ; and pro-
posing creatures as objects of religious worship, wherein he answers the
character of the apostle: 2 Thes. ii. 4, ' Shewing himself that he is god,'
in challenging that power which is only the right of divine sovereignty ;
exalting himself above God, in indulging those things which the law of God
never allowed, but hath severely prohibited.

This controlling the sovereignty of God, not allowing him the rights of
his crown, is the soul and spirit of many errors. Why are the decrees of
election and preterition denied ? Because men will not acknowledge God the
sovereign disposer of his creature. Why is effectual calling and efficacious
grace denied ? Because they will not allow God the proprietor and distributor
of his own goods. Why is the satisfaction of Christ denied ? Because they
will not allow God a power to vindicate his own law in what way he pleaseth.
Most of the errors of men may be resolved into a denial of God's sovereignty.
All have a tincture of the first evil sentiment of Adam.

The sovereignty of God is contemned in the practices of men.

1. As he is a lawgiver.

(1.) When laws are made, and urged in any state, contrary to the law of
God. It is part of God's sovereignty to be a lawgiver. Not to obey his
law is a breach made upon his right of government ; but it is treason in any
against the crown of God to mint laws with a stamp contrary to that of
heaven, whereby they renounce their due subjection, and vie with God for
dominion ; snatch the supremacy from him, and account themselves more
lords than the sovereign Monarch of the world. When men will not let God
be the judge of good and evil, but put in their own vote, controlHng his to
establish their own, such are not content to be as gods subordinate to the
supreme God, to sit at his feet ; nor co-ordinate with him, to sit equal upon
his throne ; but paramount to him, to overtop and shadow his crown, — a

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 465

boldness that leaves the serpent in the first temptation under the character
of a more commendable modesty, who advised our first parents to attempt
to be as gods, but not above him, and would enervate a law of God, but
not enact a contrary one to be observed by them. Such was the usurpation
of Nebuchadnezzar, to set up a golden image to be adored, Dan. iii., as if
he had power to mint gods as well as to conquer men ; to set the stamp of
a deity upon a piece of gold, as well as his own effigies upon his current
coin. Much of the same nature was that of Darius by the motion of his
flatterers, to prohibit any petition to be made to God for the space of thirty
dnjs, as though God was not to have a worship without a license from a
doating piece of clay, Dan. vi. 7. So Henry the Third of France, by his
edict, silenced masters of families from praying with their households.*
And it is a farther contempt of God's authority when good men are oppressed
by the sole weight of power for not observing such laws,f as if they had a
real sovereignty over the consciences of men more than God himself.
When the apostles were commanded by an angel from God to preach in the
temple the doctrine of Christ, Acts v. 19, 20, they were fetched from
thence with a guard before the council, ver. 26. And what is the language
of those statesmen to them ? As absolute as God himself could speak to
any transgressors of his law : ver. 28, ' Did not we straitly command you
that you should not teach in this name ?' It is sufficient that we gave you
a command to be silent, and publish no more this doctrine of Jesus. It is
not for you to examine our decrees, but rest in our order as loyal subjects,
and comply with your rulers ; they might have added, though it be with the
damnation of your souls. How would those overrule the apostles by no
other reason but their absolute pleasure ? And though God had espoused
their cause, by delivering them out of the prison wherein they had locked
them the day before, yet not one of all this council had the wit or honesty
to entitle it a fighting against God but Gamaliel, ver. 34. So foolishly
fond are men to put themselves in the place of God, and usurp a jurisdic-
tion over men's consciences, and to presume that laws made against the
interest and command of God must be of more force than the laws of God's
enacting.

(2.) The sovereignty of God is contemned in making additions to the
laws of God. The authority of a sovereign lawgiver is invaded and vilified
when an inferior presumes to make orders equivalent to his edicts. It is a
pranmnire against heaven to set up an authority distinct from that of God,
or to enjoin anything as necessary in matter of worship for which a divine
commission cannot be shewn. God was always so tender of this part of his
prerogative, that he would not have anything wrought in the tabernacle, not
a vessel, not an instrument, but what himself had prescribed : Exod. xxv. 9,
'According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and
the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it ; ' which
is strictly urged again, ver. 40, 'Look that thou make them after their
pattern ; ' look to it, beware of doing anything of thine own head, and just-
ling with my authority. It was so afterwards in the matter of the temple
which succeeded the tabernacle ; God gave the model of it to David, and
' made him understand in writing hj his hand upon him, even all the works
of this pattern,' 1 Chron. xxviii. 19. Neither the royal authority in Moses,
who was 'kingin Jeshurun,' nor in David, who was ' a man after God's own
heart,' and called to the crown by a special and extraordinary providence,
nor Aaron, and the high priests his successors, invested in the sacerdotal
office, had any authority from God to do anything in the framing the taber-
* Trap, in he. t Faucheur, vol. ii. p. 663, 664.

VOL. II. G g

466 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

aacle or temple of their own heads. God barred them from anything of
that nature, by giving them an exact pattern, so dear to him was always this
flower of his crown. And afterwards, the power of appointing officers and
ordinances in the church was delegated to Christ, and was among the rest
of those royalties given to him, which he fully completed 'for the edifying of
the body,' Eph. iv. 11, 12. And he hath the elogy by the Spirit of God,
to be 'faithful, as Moses was, in all his house, to him that appointed him,'
Heb. iii. 2. Faithfulness in a trust implies a punctual observing directions.
God was still so tender of this, that even Christ, the Son, should no more
do anything in this .concern, without appointment and pattern, than Moses
a servant, ver. 5, 6. It seems to be a vote of nature to refer the original of
the modes of all worship to God ; and therefore, in all those varieties of
ceremonies among the heathens, there were scarce any but were imagined
by them to be the dictates and orders of some of their pretended deities,
and not the resolves of mere human authority. What intrusion upon God's
right hath the papacy made, in regard of officers, cardinals, patriarchs, &c.,
not known in any divine order ; in regard of ceremonies in worship,
pressed as necessary to obtain the favour of God, holy water, crucifixes,
altars, images, cringings, reviving many of the Jewish and pagan ceremonies,
and adopting them into the family of Christian ordinances, as if God had
been too absolute and arbitrary in repealing the one, and dashing in pieces
the other ! When God had by his sovereign order framed a religion for the
heart, men are ready to usurp an authority to frame one for the sense, to
dress the ordinances of God in new and gaudy habits, to take the eye by a
vain pomp, thus affecting a divine royalty, and acting a silly childishness ;
and after this, to impose the observation of those upon the consciences of
men is a bold ascent into the throne of God. To impose laws upon the
conscience, which Christ hath not imposed, hath deservedly been thought
the very spirit of antichrist; it may be called als-o the spirit of anti-God.
God hath reserved to himself the sole sovereignty over the conscience, and
never indulged men any part of it ; he hath not given man a power over
his own conscience, much less one man a power over another's conscience.
Men have a power over outward things, to do this or that where it is deter-
mined by the law of God, but not the least authority to control any dictate
or determination of conscience. The sole empire of that is appropriate to
God, as one of the great marks of his royalty. What an usurpation is it of
God's right to make conscience a slave to man, which God hath solely, as
the Father of spirits, subjected to himself! an usurpation which, though
the apostles, those extraordinary officers, might better have claimed, yet
they utterly disowned any imperious dominion over the faith of others,
2 Cor. i. 24. Though in this they do not seem to climb up above God,
yet they set themselves in the throne of God, envy him an absolute mon-
archy, would be sharers with him in his legislative power, and grasp one
end of his sceptre in their own hands. They do not pretend to take the
crown from God's head, but discover a bold ambition to shuffle their hairy
scalps under it, and wear part of it upon their own, that they may rule with
him, not under him, and would be joint lords of his manor with him, who
hath by the apostle forbidden any to be ' lords of his heritage,' 1 Peter v. 3.
And therefore they cannot assume such an authority to themselves till they
can shew where God hath resigned this part of his authority to them. If
their exposition of that place. Mat. xvi. 18, ' Upon this rock I will build my
church,' be granted to be true, and that the person and successors of Peter
are meant by that rock, it could be no apology for their usurpations; it is
• not Peter and his successors shall build, but ' / will build ; ' others are

Ps. cm. 19.J god's dominion. 467

instruments in building, but they are to observe the directions of the grand
Architect.

(3.) The sovereignty of God is contemned when men prefer obedience to
men's laws before obedience to G-od. As God hath an undoubted right, as
the lawgiver and ruler of the world, to enact laws, without consulting the
pleasure of men, or requiring their consent to the verifying and establishing
his edicts, so are men obliged by their allegiance, as subjects, to observe the
laws of their Creator, without consulting whether they be agreeable to the
laws of his revolted creatures. To consult with flesh and blood whether we
should obey, is to authorise flesh and blood above the purest and most sove-
reign Spirit. When men will obey their superiors, without taking in the
condition the apostle prescribes to servants. Col. iii. 32, ' In singleness of
heart, fearing God,' and postpone the fear of God to the fear of man, it is
to render God of less power with them than the drop of a bucket or dust of
the balance. When we, out of fear of punishment, will observe the laws of
men against the laws of God, it is like the Egyptians, to worship a raven-
ous crocodile instead of a deity ; when we submit to human laws, and
stagger at divine, it is to set man upon the throne of God, and God at the
footstool of man ; to set man above, and God beneath ; to make him the
tail, and not the head, as God speaks in another case of Israel, Dent,
xxviii. 13. When we pay an outward observation to divine laws because
they are backed by the laws of man, and human authority is the motive of
our observance, we subject God's sovereignty to man's authority ; what he
hath from us is more owing to the pleasure of men than any value we have
for the empire of God. When men shall commit murders, and imbrue their
hands in blood by the order of a gi-andee ; when the worst sins shall be
committed by the order of papal dispensations ; when the use of his crea-
tures, whichGod hath granted and sanctified, shall be abstained from for so
many days in the week, and so many weeks in the year, because of a Roman
edict, the authority of man is acknowledged not only equal, but superior to
that of God. The dominion of dust and clay is preferred before the un-
doubted right of the Sovereign of the world. The commands of God are
made less than human, and the orders of men more authoritative than
divine, and a grand rebel usurpation of God's right is countenanced. When
men are more devout in observance of uncertain traditions, or mere human
inventions, tlian at the hearing of the unquestionable oracles of God ; when
men shall squeeze their countenances into a more serious figure, and de-
mean themselves in a more religious posture, at the appearance of some
mock ceremony clothed in a Jewish or pagan garb, which hath unhappily
made a rent in the coat of Christ, and pay a more exact reverence to that
which hath no divine, but only a human, stamp upon it, than to the clear and
plain word of God, which is perhaps neglected with sleepy nods, or, which
is worse, entertained with profane scofls : this is to prefer the authority of
man employed in trifles before the authority of the wise Lawgiver of the
world. Besides, the ridiculousness of it is as great as to adore a glow-worm
and laugh at the sun ; or for a courtier to be more exact in his cringes and
starched postures before a puppet than before his sovereign prince. In all
this we make not the will and authority of God our rule, but the will of
man ; disclaim our dependence on God, to hang upon the uncertain breath
of a creature ; in all this God is made less than man, and man more than
God. God is deposed, and man enthroned ; God made a slave, and man
a sovereign above him. To this we may refer the solemn addresses of some
for the maintenance of the protestant religion according to law, the law of
man, not so much minding the law of God ; resolving to make the law, the

468 chaknock's woeks. [Ps. CIII. 19.

church, the state, the rule of their religion, and change that if the laws be
changed, steering their opinions by the compass of the magistrate's judgment
and interest.

2. The dominion of God as a proprietor is practically contemned ; —

(1.) By envy. When we are not as flush and gay, as well-spread and
sparkling as others, this passion gnaws our souls ; and we become the exe-
cutioners to rack ourselves, because God is the executor of his own pleasure.
The foundation of this passion is a quarrel with God ; to envy others the
enjoyment of their propriety is to envy God his right of disposal, and con-
sequently the propriety of his own goods. It is a mental theft committed
against God, we rob him of his right in our will and wish ; it is a robbery
to make ourselves equal with God when it is not our due, which is implied,
Phil. ii. 6, when Christ is said to ' think it no robbery to be equal with
God.' We would wrest the sceptre out of his hand, wish he were not the
conductor of the world, and that he would resign his sovereignty, and the
right of the distribution of his own goods, to the capricios of our humour, and
ask our leave to what subjects he should dispense his favours. All envy
is either a tacit accusation of God as an usurper, and assuming a right to
dispose of that which doth not belong to him, and so it is a denial of his
propriety ; or else charges him with a blind or unjust distribution, and so
it is a bespattering his wisdom and righteousness. When God doth
punish envy, he vindicates his own sovereignty, as though this passion chiefly
endeavoured to blast this perfection : Ezek. xxv. 11, 12, 'As I live, saith
the Lord, I will do according to thy anger, and according to thy envy ; and
thou shalt know that I am the Lord.' The sin of envy in the devils was
immediately against the crown of God ; and so was the sin of envy in the
first man, envying God the sole prerogative in knowledge above himself.
This base humour in Cain, at the preference of Abel's sacrifice before his,
was the cause that he deprived him of his life ; denying God first his right
of choice, and what he should accept, and then invading God's right of
propriety, in usurping a power over the life and being of his brother, which
solely belonged to God.

(2.) The dominion of God as a proprietor is practically contemned by a
violent or surreptitious taking a^-ay from any what God hath given him the
possession of. Since God is the Lord of all, and may give the possession
and dominion of things to whom he pleaseth, all theft and purloining, all
cheating and cozening another of his right, is not only a crime against the true
possessor, depriving him of what he is entrusted with, but against God as
the absolute and universal proprietor, having a right thereby to confer his
own goods upon whom he pleaseth, as well as against God as a lawgiver for-
bidding such a violence. The snatching away what is another's denies man
the right of possession, and God the right of donation. The Israelites
taking the Egyptians' jewels had been theft, had it not been by a divine
license and order ; but cannot be slandered with such a term, after the pro-
prietor of the whole world had altered the title, and alienated them by his
positive grant from the Egyptians, to confer them upon the Israelites.

(3.) The dominion of God as a proprietor is practically contemned, by
not using what God hath given us for those ends for which he gave them
to us. God passeth things over to us with a condition, to use that for his
glory which he hath bestowed upon us by his bounty. He is Lord of the
end for which he gives, as well as Lord of what he gives ; the donor's right
of propriety is infringed, when the lands and legacies he leaves to a peculiar
use are not employed to those ends to which he bequeathed them. The
right of the lord of a manor is violated when the copyhold is not used accord-

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 469

ing to the coudition of the conveyance ; so it is an invasion of God's sove-
reignty not to use the creatui-es for those ends for which we are entrusted
with them ; when we deny ourselves a due and lawful support from them,
hence covetousness is an invasion of his right ; or when we necessarily
waste them, hence prodigality disowns his propriety ; or when we bestow
not anything upon the relief of others, hence uncharitableness comes under
the same title, appropriating that to ourselves, as if we were the lords, when
we are but the usufructuaries for ourselves, and stewards for others ; this is
to be ' rich to ourselves, not to God,' Luke xii. 24 ; for so are they who
employ not their wealth for the service, and according to the intent of the
donor. Thus the Israelites did not own God the true proprietor of their
corn, wine, and oil, which God had given them for his worship, when they
prepared ofierings for Baal out of his stock : Hosea ii. 8, ' For she did not
know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her gold and
silver, which they prepared for Baal,' as if they had been sole proprietors,
and not factors, by commission, to improve the goods for the true owner.
It is the same invasion of God's right, to use the parts and gifts that God
hath given us, either as fuel for our pride, or advancing self, or a witty scoff-
ing at God and religion, when we use not religion for the honour of our
sovereign, but a stool to rise by, and observe his precepts outwardly, not
out of regard to his authority, but as a stale to our interest, and furnishing
self with a little concern and trifle. When men will wrest his word for the
favour of their lusts, which God intended for the checking of them, and make
interpretations of it according to their humours, and not according to his
will discovered in the Scripture, this is to pervert the use of the best goods
and deposilion. he hath put into our hands, even divine revelations. Thus
hypocrisy makes the sovereignty of God a nuUity.

8. The dominion of God as a governor is practically contemned ; —
(1.) In idolatry. Since worship is an acknowledgment of God's sove-
reignty, to adore any creature instead of God, or to pay to anything that
homage of trust and confidence which is due to God, though it be the highest
creature in heaven or earth, is to acknowledge that sovereignly to pertain to a
creature, which is challenged by God ; as to set up the greatest lord in a
kingdom in the government, instead of the lawful prince, is rebellion and
usurpation ; and that woman incurs the crime of adultery who commits it
with a person of great port and honour, as well as with one of a mean condi-
tion. "While men create anything a god, they own themselves supreme above
the true God, yea, and above that which they account a god ; for by the
right of creation they have a superiority, as it is a deity blown up by the
breath of their own imagination. The authority of God is, in this sin,
ackuowledged to belong to an idol; it is called loathing of God as a husband,
Ezek. xvi. 45 ; all the authority of God as a husband and lord over them :
80 when we make anything, or any person in the world, the chief object and
prop of our trust and confidence, we act the same part. Trust in an idol is
the formal part of idolatry : Ps. cxv. 8, ' So is every one that trusts in them,'
i. e. in idols. Whatsoever thing we make the object of our trust, we rear as
an idol ; it is rot unlawful to have the image of a creature, but to bestow
divine adoration upon it ; it was not unlawful for the Egyptians to possess
and use ox«n, but to dub them gods to be adored, it was. It is not unlaw-
ful to have wealth and honour, not to have gifts and parts ; they are the
presents of 'God ; but to love them above God, to fix our reliances upon
them more than upon God, is to rob God of his due, who, being our Creator,
ought to be our confidence. What we want we are to desire of him, and
expect from him. When we confide in anything else, we deny God the

470 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

glory of his creation, we disown him to be Lord of the world, imply that our
welfare is in the hands of, and depends upon, that thing wherein we confide ;
it is not only to equal it to God in sovereign power, which is his own phrase,
Isa. xl. 25, but to prefer it before him in a reproach of him. When the
hosts of heaven shall be served, instead of the Lord of those hosts, when
we shall lacquey after the stars, depend barely upon their influences, without
looking up to the great director of the sun, it is to pay an adoration unto a
captain in a regiment, which is due to the general. When we shall ' make
gold our hope, and say to the fine gold. Thou art my confidence,' it is to
deny the supremacy of that ' God that is above,' as well as if we ' kiss our
hands ' in a way of adoration ' to the sun in its splendour, or the moon
walking in its brightness,' for Job couples them together, chap. xxxi. 25-28.
It is to prefer the authority of earth before that of heaven, and honour clay
above the sovereign of the world ; as if a soldier should confide more in the
rag of an ensign, or the fragment of a drum, for his safety, than in the
orders and conduct of his general. It were as much as is in his power
to uncommission him, and snatch from him his commander's stafi". When
we advance the creature in our love above God, and the altar of our soul
smokes with more thoughts and afi'ectious to a petty interest than to God, we
lift up that which was given us as a servant in tlie place of the sovereign,
and bestow that throne upon it which is to be kept undefiled for the rightful
Lord, and subject the interest of God to the demands of the creature ; so
much respect is due to God, that none should be placed in the throne of our
afi'ections equal with him, much less anything to perk above him.

(2.) Impatience is a contempt of God as a governor. When we meet
with rubs in the way of any design, when our expectations are crossed, we
will break through all obstacles to accomplish our projects, whether God will
or no. When we are too much dejected at some unexpected providence,
and murmur at the instruments of it, as if God divested himself of his pre-
rogative of conducting human afi"airs ; when a little cross blows us into a
mutiny, and swells us into a sauciness to implead God, or make us fret
against him (as the expression is, Isa. viii. 21), wishing him out of his
throne : no sin is so devilish as this, there is not any strikes more at all the
attributes of God than this, against his goodness, righteousness, holiness,
wisdom, and doth as little spare his sovereignty as any of the rest. What
can it be else but an impious invasion of his dominion, to quarrel with him
for what he doth, and to say, What reason hast thou to deal thus with me ?
This language is in the nature of all impatience, whereby we question his
sovereignty, and parallel our dominion with his. When men have not that
confluence of wealth or honour they greedily desired, they bark at God, and
revile his government ; they are angry God doth not more respectfully ob-
serve them, as though he had nothing to do in their matters, and were want-
ing in that becoming reverence which they think him bound to pay to such
great ones as they are. They would have God obedient to their minds, and
act nothing but what he receives a commission for from their wills. When
.we murmur, it is as if w^e would command his will and wear his crown, a
wresting the sceptre out of his hands to sway it ourselves, we deny him the
right of government, disown his power over us, and would be our own sove-
reigns ; you may find the character of it in the language of Jehoram (as
many understand it), 2 Kings vi. 83, ' Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what
should I wait for the Lord any longer ?' This an evil of such a nature, that
it could come from none but the hand of God ; why should I attend upon
him as my sovereign, that delights to do me so much mischief, that throws
curses upon me when I expected blessings ? I will no more observe his

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 471

directions, but follow my own sentiments, and regard not his authority in
the lips of his doating prophet. The same you fiud in the Jews, when they
were under God's lash : Jer. xviii. 12, ' And they said, There is no hope:
but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagina-
tion of his evil heart ;' we can expect no good from him, and therefore we
will be our own sovereigns, and prefer the authority of our own imaginations
before that of his precepts. Men would be their own carvers, and not suffer
God to use his right ; as if a stone should order the mason in what manner
to hew it, and in what part of the building to place it. We are not ordinarily
concerned so much at the calamities of our neighbours, but swell against
heaven at a light drop upon ourselves. We are content God should be the
sovereign of others, so that he will be a servant to us ; let him deal as he
will himself with others, so he will treat us, and what relates to us, as we will
ourselves. We would have God resign his authority to our humours, and
our humours should be in the place of a god to him, to direct him what was
fit to do in our own cause. When things go not according to our vote, our
impatience is a wish that God were deposed from his throne, that he would
surrender his seat to some that would deal more favourably, and be more
punctual observers of our directions. Let us look to ourselves in regard of
this sin, which is too common, and the root of much mischief. This seems
to be the first bubbling of Adam's will ; he was not content with the condition
wherein God had placed him, but affected another, which ended in the ruin
of himself and of mankind.

(3.) Limiting God in his way of working to our methods, is another part
of the contempt of his dominion. When we will prescribe him methods of
acting, that he should deliver us in this or that way, we would not _ suffer
him to be the Lord of his own favours, and have the privilege to be his own
director. When we will limit him to such a time wherein to work our de-
liverance, we would rob him of the power of times and seasons, which are
solely .in his hand. We would regulate his conduct according to our imagina-
tions, and assume a power to give laws to our sovereign. Thus the IsraeUtes
'limited the Holy One of Israel,' Ps. Ixxviii. 41. They would control his
absolute dominion, and of a sovereign make him their slave. Man that is
God's vassal would set bounds to his Lord, and cease to be a servant and
commence master, when he would give, not take, directions from him. When
God had given them manna, and their fancies were weary of that delicious
food, they would prescribe heaven to rain down some other sort of food for
them. When they wanted no sufficient provision in the wilderness, they
quarrelled with God for bringing them out of Egypt, and not presently giving
them a place of seed, of figs, vines, and pomegranates. Num. xx. 5, which is
called a ' striving with the Lord,' ver. 13, a contending with him for his
Lordship. When we tempt God, and require a sign of him as a mark of his
favour, we circumscribe his dominion ; when we will not use the means he
hath appointed, but father our laziness upon a trust in his providence, as if
we expected he should work a miracle for our relief; when we censure him
for what he hath done in the course of his providence ; when we capitulate
with him, and promise such a service, if he will do us such a good turn
according to our platform, we would bring down his sovereign pleasure to
our will, we invade his throne, and expect a submissive obedience from him.
Man, that hath not wit enough to govern himself, would be governing God, and
those that cannot be their own sovereigns affect a sovereignty over heaven.

(4.) Pride and presumption is another invasion of his dominion. When
men will resolve to go to-morrow to such a city, to such a fair and market,
to traffic and get gain, without thinking of the necessity of a divine license.

472 charnock's woeks. [Ps. CIII. 19.

as if ourselves were the lords of our time, and of our lives, and God were to
lacquey after us, — James iv. 13, 15, ' Ye that say. To-day we ;will go into
such a city, and buy and sell, whereas ye ought to say. If the Lord will, we
shall live,' — as if they had a freehold, and were not tenants at will to the lord
of the manor ; when we presume upon our own strength or wit to get the
better of our adversaries, as the Germans (as Tacitus relates) assured them-
selves by the numerousness of their army of a victory against the Romans,
and prepared chains to fetter the captives before the conquest, which were
found in their camp after their defeat ; when we are peremptory in expecta-
tions of success according to our will, as Pharaoh, Exod. xv. 9, ' I will pur-
sue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil ; my lust shall be satisfied upon
them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them,' — he speaks
more like a God than a man, as if he were the sovereign power, and God
only his vicar and lieutenant ; how he struts, without thinking of a superior
power to curb him ; when men ascribe to themselves what is the sole fruit
of God's sovereign pleasure, as the king of Assyria speaks a language fit
only to be spoken by God, — Isa. x. 13, 14, &c., ' I have removed the bounds
of the people ; my hand hath found, as a nest, the riches of the people ; I
have gathered all the earth,' — which God declares to be a wrong to his sove-
reignty, by the title wherewith he prefaceth his threatening against him,
ver. 16, * Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat
ones leanness,' &c. : it is indeed a rifling, if not of his crown, yet of the
most glittering jewel of it, his glory, ' He that mocks the poor reproacheth
his maker,' Prov. xvii. 5. He never thinks that God made them poor, and
himself rich ; he owns not his riches to be dropped upon him by the divine
hand. Self is the great invader of God's sovereignty, doth not only spurn
at it, but usurp it, and assume divine honours, payable only to the universal
sovereign. The Assyrian was not so modest as the Chaldean, who would
impute his power and victories to his idol, Hab. i. 11, whom he thought to
be God, though yet robbing the true God of his authority ; and so mu^;h was
signified by their names, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, Belshazzar, Nebo,
Merodach, Bel, being the Chaldean idols, and the names signifying lord of
wealth, giver of riches, and the like. When we behave ourselves proudly
towards others, and imagine ourselves greater than our Maker ever meant
us ; when we would give laws to others, and expect the most submissive
observances from them, as if God had resigned his authority to us, and made
us in his stead the rightful monarchs of the world ; to disdain that any
creature should be above us, is to disdain God's sovereign disposition of
men, and consequently his own superiority over us. A proud man would
govern all, and would not have God his sovereign, but his subject ; to over-
value ourselves is to under-value God.

(5.) Slight and careless worship of God, is another contempt of his sove-
reignty. A prince is contemned, not only by a neglect of those reverential
postures which are due to him, but in a reproachful and scornful way of pay-
ing them. To behave ourselves uncomely or immodestly before a prince, is
a disesteem of majesty. Sovereignty requires awe in every address ; where
this is wanting, there is a disrespect of authority. We contemn God's
dominion when we give him the service of the lip, the hand, the knee, and
deny him that of the heart, as they in Ezekiel, chap, xxxiii. 31, as though
he were the sovereign only of the body, and not of the soul. To have de-
vout figures of the face and uncomely postures of the soul, is to exclude his
dominion from our spirits, while we own it only over our outward man ; we
render him an insignificant Lord, not worthy of any higher adorations from
us than a senseless statue ; we demean not ourselves according to his majestical

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 473

authority over us, when we present him not with the cream and quintessence
of our souls. The greatness of God required a great house and a costly
palace : 1 Chron. xxix. 11, 16, David speaks it in order to the building God
a house and temple ; God being a great king, expects a male, the best of our
flock, Mai. i. 14, a masculine and vigorous service. When we present him
with a sleepy, sickly, rheumatic service, we betray our conceptions of him to
be as mean as if he were some petty lord, whose dominion were of no larger
extent than a mole-hill, or some inconsiderable village.

(6.) Omission of the service he hath appointed, is another contempt of
his sovereignty. This is a contempt of his dominion, whereby he hath a
right to appoint what means and conditions he pleaseth, for the enjoyment
of his protiered and promised benefits. It is an enmity to his sceptre not
to accept of his terms after a long series of precepts and invitations, made
for the restoring us to that happiness we had lost, and providing all means
necessary thereunto, nothing being wanting but our own concurrence with it
and acceptance of it, by rendering that easy homage he requires. By with-
holding from him the service he enjoins, we deny that we hold anything of
him, as he that pays not the quit-rent, though it be never so small, disowns
the sovereignty of the lord of the manor. It implies that he is a miserable
poor lord, having no right, or destitute of any power to dispose of anything
in the world to our ad%antage : Job xxii. 17, ' They say unto God, Depart
from us, what can the Almighty do for them ?' They will have no com-
merce with him in a way of duty, because they imagine him to have no
sovereign power to do anything for them in way of benefit, as if his do-
minion were an empty title, and as much destitute of any authority to com-
mand a favour for them as any idol. They think themselves to have as ab-
solute a disposal of things as God himself. What can he do for us ? What
can he confer upon us, that we cannot invest ourselves in, as though they
were sovereigns in an equality with God. Thus men live ' without God in
the world,' Eph. ii. 12, as if there were no supreme being to pay a respect
to, or none fit to receive any homage at their hands, withholding from God
the right of his time and the right of his service, which is the just claim of
his sovereignty.

(7.) Censuring others is a contempt of his sovereignty. When we cen-
sure men's persons or actions by a rash judgment, when we will be judges
of the good and evil of men's actions, where the law of God is utterly silent,
we usurp God's place and invade his right, we claim a superiority over the
law, and judge God defective as the rector of the world, in his prescriptions
of good and e\il : James iv. 11, 12, ' He that speaks evil of his brother, and
judges his brother, speaks evil of the law, and judgeth the law ; there is one
lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. Who art thou that judgest an-
other ?' Do you know what you do in-judging another? You take upon
you the garb of a sovereign, as if he were more your servant than God's,
and more under your authority than the authority of God ; it is a setting
thyself in God's tribunal, and assunjing his rightful power of judging. Thy
brother is not to be governed by thy fancy, but by God's law and his own
conscience.

2. Information. Hence it follows that God doth actually govern the
world. He hath not only a right to rule, but * he rules over all,' so saith
the text. He is ' King of kings, and Lord of lords.' What, to let them
do what they please, and all that their lust prompts them to ? Hath God
an absolute dominion ? Is it good, and is it wise ? Is it, then, a useless
prerogative of the divine nature ? Shall so excellent a power lie idle, as if
God were a lifeless image ? Shall we fancy God like some lazy monarch,

474 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

that solacetli himself in the gardens of his palace, or steeps himself in some
charming pleasures, and leaves his lieutenants to govern the several pro-
vinces, which are all members of his empire, according to their own humour?
Not to exercise this dominion, is all one as not to have it ; to what purpose
is he invested with this sovereignty, if he were careless of what were done
in the world, and regarded not the oppressions of men ? God keeps no
useless excellency by him ; he actually reigns over the heathen, Ps. xlvii. 8,
and those as bad or worse than heathens. It had been a vanity in David to
call upon ' the heavens to be glad, and the earth to rejoice,' under the rule
of a sleepy deity, 1 Chron. xvi. 31. No ; his sceptre is full of eyes, as it was
painted by the Egyptians ; he is always waking, and always, more than
Ahasuerus, reading over the records of human actions. Not to exercise
his authority, is all one as not to regard whether he keep the crown upon
his head, or continueth the sceptre in his hand. If this sovereignty were
exempt from care, it would be destitute of justice ; God is more righteous
than to resign the ensigns of his authority to blind and oppressive man.
To think that God hath a power, and doth not use it for just and righteous
ends, is to imagine him an unrighteous as well as a careless sovereign.
Such a thing in a man renders him a base man, and a worse governor ; it
is a vice that disturbs the world, and overthrows the ends of authority, as to
have a power and use it well, is the greatest virtue of an earthly sovereign.
What an unworthy conception is it of God, to acknowledge him to be
possessed of a greater authority than the greatest monarch, and yet to think
that he useth it less than a petty lord, that his crown is of no more value
with him than a feather ! This represents God impotent, that he cannot,
or unrighteous and base, that he will not, administer the authority he hath
for the noblest and justest end. But can we say that he neglects the
government of the world ? How come things, then, to remain in their due
order ? How comes the law of nature yet to be preserved in every man's
soul ? How comes conscience to check, and cite, and judge ? If God did
not exercise his authority, what authority could conscience have to dis-
turb man in unlawful practices, and to make his sports and sweetness so
unpleasant and sour to him ? Hath he not given frequent notices and
memorials that he holds a curb over corrupt inclinations, puts rubs in the
way of malicious attempters, and often oversets the disturbers of the peace
of the world ?

3. Information. God can do no wrong, since he is absolute sovereign.
Man may do wrong, princes may oppress and rifle, but it is a crime in them
so to do, because their power is a power of government, and not of propriety
in the goods or lives of their subjects ; but God cannot do any wrong, what-
soever the clamours of creatures are, because he can do nothing but what
he hath a sovereign right to do. If he takes away [yjour goods, he takes
not away anything that is yours more than his own, since, though he entrusted
you with them, he divested not himself of the propriety. When he takes
away our lives, he takes what he gave us by a temporary donation, to be
surrendered at his call. We can claim no right in anything, but by his
will. He is no debtor to us, and since he owes us nothing, he can wrong
us in nothing that he takes away. His own sovereignty excuseth him in
all those acts which are most distasteful to the creature. If we crop a medi-
cinal plant for our use, or a flower for our pleasure, or kill a lamb for our
food, we do neither of them any wrong, because the original of them was for
our use, and they had their Hfe and nourishment, and pleasing qualities for
our delight and support; and are not we much more made for the pleasure
and use of God, than any of those can be for us ? 'Of him, and to him are

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 475

all things,' Rom. xi. 36. Hath not God as much right over any one of us,
as over the meanest worm ? Though there be a vast difference in nature
between the angels in heaven and the worms on earth, yet they are all one
in regard of subjection to God ; he is as much the Lord of the one as the
other, as much the proprietor of the one as the other, as much the
governor of the one as the other. Not a cranny in the world is exempt
from his jurisdiction, not a mite or grain of a creature exempt from his
propriety.

He is not our Lord by election. He was a Lord before we were in being ;
he had no terms put upon him. Who capitulated with him, and set him in
his throne by covenant ? What oath did he take to any subject at his first
investiture in his authority ? His right is as natural, as eternal, as himself;
as natural as his existence, and as necessary as his deity. Hath he any
law but his own will ? What wrong can he do that breaks no law, that ful-
fils his law in everything he doth by fulfilling his own will, which, as it is
absolutely sovereign, so it is infinitely righteous ? In whatsoever he takes
from us, then, he cannot injure us ; it is no crime in any man to seize upon
his own goods, to vindicate his own honour ; and shall it be thought a wrong
in God to do such things ? besides the occasion he hath from every man,
and that every day provoking him to do it. He seems rather to wrong him-
self by forbearing such a seizure, than wrong us by executing it.

4. If God have a sovereignty over the whole world, then merit is totally
excluded. His right is so absolute over all creatures, that he neither is nor
can be a debtor to any; not to the undefiled holiness of the blessed angels,
much less to poor earthly worms. Those blessed spirits enjoy their glory
by the title of his sovereign pleasure, not by virtue of any obligation devolv-
ing from them upon God. Are not the faculties whereby they and we per-
form any act of obedience his grant to us ? Is not the strength whereby
they and we are enabled to do anything pleasing to him, a gift from him ?
Can a vassal merit of his lord, or a slave of his master, by using his tools,
and employing his strength in his service, though it was a strength he had
naturally, not by donation from the man in whose service it is employed ?
God is Lord of all, all is due to him ; how can we oblige him by giving him
what is his own, more his to whom it is presented than ours by whom it is
offered ? He becomes not a debtor by receiving anything from us, but by
promising something to us.*

5. If God hath a sovereign dominion over the whole world, then hence it
follows, that all magistrates are but sovereigns under God. He is King of
kings and Lord of lords ; all the potentates in the world are no other than
his lieutenants, moveable at his pleasure, and more at his disposal than their
subjects are at theirs. Though they are dignified with the title of (jods, yet
still they are at an infinite distance from the supreme Lord. Gods under
God, not to be above him, not to be against him. The want of the due
sense of their subordination to God, hath made many in the world act as
sovereigns above him, more than sovereigns under him. Had they all bore
a deep conviction of this upon their spirits, such audacious language had
never dropped from the mouth of Pharaoh, ' Who is the Lord, that I should
obey his voice to let Israel go ?' Exod. v. 2, presuming that there was no
superior to control him, nor any in heaven able to be a match for him.
Darius bad never published such a doating edict as to prohibit any petition
to God. Nero had never fired Home, and sung at the sight of the devouring
flames ; nor ever had he ripped up his mother's belly, to see the womb where
he first lodged and received a Ufe so hateful to his country; nor would Abner

* Austin.

476 chabnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

and Joab, the two generals, have accounted the death of men but a sport and
interlude: 2 Sam. ii. 14, 'Let the young men arise and play before us;'
what play it was the next verse acquaints you with, thrusting their swords
into one another's sides. They were no more troubled at the death of
thousands, than a man is to kill a fly or a flea. Had a sense of this but
hovered over their souls, people in many countries had not been made their
footballs, and used worse than their dogs ; nor had the lives of millions,
worth more than a world, been exposed to fire and sword, to support some
sordid lust, or breach of faith upon an idle quarrel, and for the depreda-
tion of their neighbours' estates ; the flames of cities had not been so bright,
nor the streams of blood so deep, nor the cries of innocents so loud.

In particular,

(1.) If God be sovereign, all under-sovereigns are not to rule against him,
but to be obedient to his orders. If they rule by his authority, Prov. viii.
15, they are not to rule against his interest, they are not to imagine them-
selves as absolute as God, and that their laws must be of as sovereign
authority against his honour as the divine are for it. If they are his lieu-
tenants on earth, they ought to act according to his orders. No man but
will account a governor of a province a rebel, if he disobeys the orders sent
him by the sovereign prince that commissioned him. Kebellion against
God is a ci-ime of princes, as well as rebellion against princes a crime of
subjects. Saul is charged with it by Samuel in a high manner for an act of
simple disobedience, though intended for the service of God, and the enrich-
ing his country with the spoils of the Amalekites : 1 Sam. xv. 23, ' Ptebellion
is as the sin of witchcraft;' like witchcraft or covenanting with the devil,
acting as if he had received his commission, not from God, but from Satan.
Magistrates, as commissioned by God, ought to act for him. Doth human
authority ever give a commission to any to rebel against itself? Did God
ever depute any earthly sovereignty against his glory, and give them leave
to outlaw his laws, to introduce their own ? No; when he gave the vicarious
dominion to Christ, he calls upon the kings of the earth to be instructed, and
be wise, and kiss the Son, Ps. ii. 10, 12; i.e. to observe his orders, and pay
him homage as their governor. What a silly, doltish thing is it to resist that
supreme authority to which the archangels submit themselves, and regulate
their employments punctually by their instructions ! Those excellent crea-
tures exactly obey him in all the acts of their subordinate government in the
world, those in whose hand the greatest monarch is no more than a silly fly
between the fingers of a giant. A contradiction to the interest of God hath
been fatal to kings. The four monarchies have had their wings clipped, and
most of them have been buried in their own ashes ; they have all, like the
imitators of Lucifer's pride, fallen from the heaven of their glory to the depth
of their shame and misery. All governors are bound to be as much obedient
to God as their subjects are bound to be submissive to them. Their autho-
rity over men is limited, God's authority over them is absolute and un-
bounded. Though ' every soul' ought to be ' subject to the higher powers,'
yet there is a higher power of all, to which those higher powers are to sub-
ject themselves. They are to be keepers of both the tables of the law of
God ; and are then most sovereigns when they set in their own practice an
example of obedience to God for their subjects to write after.

(2.) They ought to imitate God in the exercise of their sovereignty in ways
of justice and righteousness. Though God be an absolute sovereign, j'et his
government is not tyrannical, but managed according to the rules of right-
eousness, wisdom, and goodness. If God, that created them as well as their
subjects, doth so exercise his government, it is a duty incumbent upon them

Ps. cm. 19.] god's domnion. 477

to do the same, since they are not the creators of their people, bnt the con-
ductors. As God's government tends to the good of the world, so ought
theirs to the good of their countries. God committed not the government
of the world to the Mediator in an unlimited way, but for the good of the
church, in order to the eternal salvation of his people : Eph. i. 12, ' He
gave him to be head over all things to the church.' He had power over the
devils, to restrain them in their temptation and malice ; power over the angels,
to order their ministry for the heirs of salvation. So power is given to
magistrates for the civil preservation of the world and of human society;
they ought therefore to consider for what ends they are placed over the rest
of mankind, and not exercise their authority in a licentious way, but con-
formable to that justice and righteousness wherein God doth administer his
government, and for the preservation of those that are committed to them.

(3.) Magistrates must then be obeyed when they act according to God's
order, and within the bounds of the diviue commission. They are no friends
to the sovereignty of God that are enemies to magistracy, his ordinance.
Saul was a good governor, though none of the best men, and the despisers
of his government after God's choice were the sons of Belial, 1 Sam. x. 27.
Christ was no enemy to Caesar. To pull down a faithful magistrate, such
an one as Zerubbabel, is to pluck a signet from the hand of God ; for in that
capacity he accounts him, Haggai ii. 23. God's servants stand or fall to
their own Master. How doth he check Aaron and Miriam for speaking
against Moses his servant ! Num. sii. 8, ' Were you not afraid to speak
against my servant Moses ? ' against Moses, as related to you in the capacity
of a governor; against Moses, as related to me in the capacity of my ser-
vant ? To speak anything against them, as they act by God's order, is an
invasion of God's sovereign right, who gave them their commission. To act
against just power, or the justice of an earthly power, is to act against God's
ordinance, who ordained them in the world, but not any abuse or ill use of
their power.

Use 2. How dreadful is the consideration of this doctrine to all rebels
against God. Can any man that hath brains in his head imagine it an incon-
siderable thing to despise the Sovereign of the world ? It was the sole crime
of disobedience to that positive law, whereby God would have a visible memo-
rial of his sovereignty preserved in the eye of man, that showered down that
deluge of misery under which the world groans to this day. God had given
Adam a soul, whereby he might live as a rational creature ; and then gives
him a law whereby he might live as a dutiful subject ; for God forbidding
him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, declared
his own supremacy over Adam, and his propriety in the pleasant world he
had given him by his bounty ; he let him know hereby that man was not his
own lord, nor was to Hve after his own sentiments, but the directions of a
superior. As when a great lord builds a magnificent palace, and brings in
another to inhabit it, he reserves a small duty to himself, not of an equal
value with the house, but for an acknowledgment of his own right, that the
tenant may know he is not the lord of it, but hath his grant by the liberality
of another.* God hereby gave Adam matter for a pure obedience, that had
no foundation in his own nature by any implanted law ; he was only in it
to respect the will of his sovereign, and to understand that he was to live
under the power of a higher than himself. There was no more moral evil
in the eating of this fruit, as considered distinct from the command, than in
eating of any other fruit in the garden. Had there been no prohibition, he
might with as much safety have fed upon it as on any other. No law of
* Chrysost. in Gen. Horn. xvi.

478 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

nature was transgressed in the act of eating of it, but the sovereignty of God
over him was denied by him ; and for this, the death threatened was inflicted
on him and his posterity ; for though divines take notice of other sins in
the fall of Adam, yet God in his trial chargeth him with none but this, and
doth put upon his question an emphasis of his own authority : Gen. iii. 11,
* Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst
not eat ?' This I am displeased with, that thou shouldst disown my domi-
nion over thyself and this garden. This was the inlet to all other sins ;
as the acknowledgment of God's sovereignty is the first step to the practice
of all the duties of a creature, so the disowning his sovereignty is the
first spring of all the extravagancies of a creature. Every sin against the
sovereign lawgiver is worthy of death. The transgression of this positive
command deserved death, and procured it to spread itself over the face of
the world. God's dominion cannot be despised without meriting the greatest
punishment.

1. Punishment necessarily follows upon the doctrine of sovereignty. It
is a faint and feeble sovereignty that cannot preserve itself, and vindicate its
own wrongs against rebellious subjects. The height of God's dominion infers
a vengeance on the contemners of it. If God be an eternal King, he is an
eternal Judge. Since sin unlinks the dependence between God the sove-
reign, and man the subject, if God did not vindicate the rights of his
sovereignty, and the authority of his law, he would seem to despise his own
dominion, be weary of it, and not act the part of a good governor ; but God
is tender of his prerogative, and doth most bestir himself when men exalt them-
selves proudly against him: Exod. xviii. 11, 'In the thing wherein they
dealt proudly, he will be above them.' When Pharaoh thought himself a
mate for God, and proudly rejected his commands, as if they had been the
messages of some petty Arabian lord, God rights his own authority upon the
life of his enemy by the ministry of the Bed Sea. He turned a great king
into a beast, to make him know, ' that the Most High ruled in the king-
doms of men :' Dan. iv. 16, 17, ' The demand is by the word of the holy
ones : to the intent that the living may know, that the Most High ruleth in
the kingdoms of men ;' and that by the petitions of the angels, who cannot
endure that the empire of God should be obscured and diminished by the
pride of man. Besides the tender respect he hath to his own glory, he is
constantly presented with the solicitations of the angels to punish the proud
ones of the earth, that darken the glory of his majesty. It is necessary for
the rescue of his honour, and necessary for the satisfaction of his illustrious
attendants, who would think it a shame to them to serve a Lord that were
always unconcerned in the rebellions of his creatures, and tamely suffer their
spurns at his throne ; and therefore there is a day wherein the haughtiness
of man shall be bowed down, the cedars of Lebanon overthrown, and high
mountains levelled, that ' God may be exalted in that day,' Isa, ii, 11, 12,
&c. Pride is a sin that immediately swells against God's authority; this
shall be brought down that God may be exalted ; not that he should have a
real exaltation, as if he were actually deposed from his government, but that
he shall be manifested to be the sovereign of the whole world. It is neces-
sary there should be a day to chase away those clouds that are upon his
throne, that the lustre of his majesty may break forth, to the confusion of
all the children of pride that vaunt against him, God hath a dominion over
us as a lawgiver, as we are his creatures, and a dominion over us in a way
of justice, as we are his criminals,

2. This punishment is unavoidable.

(1.) None can escape him. He hath the sole authority over hell and

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion, 479

death ; the keys of both are in his hand. The greatest Caesar can no more
escape him than the meanest peasant : ' Who art thou, 0 great mountain,
before Zerubbabel ? ' Zech. iv. 7. The height of angels is no match for
him, much less that of the mortal grandees of the world ; they can no more
resist him than the meanest person ; but are rather as the highest steeples,
the fittest marks for his crushing thunder. If he speaks the word, the
principalities of men come down, and the crown of their glory, Jer. xiii. 18.
He can ' take the mighty away in a moment,' and that ' without hands,' i. e.
without instruments. Job xxxiv. 20. The strongest are like the feet of
Nebuchadnezzar's image, iron and clay, iron to man, but clay to God, to be
crumbled to nothing.

(2.) What comfort can be reaped from a creature, when the Sovereign of
the world arms himself with terrors, and begins his visitation ? Isa. x. 3,
* What will you do in the day of visitation ; to whom will you fly for help,
and where will you leave your glory ?' The torments from a subject may be
relieved by the prince, but where can there be an appeal from the Sovereign
of the world? Where is there any above him to control him, if he will
overthrow us ? who is there to call him to account, and say to him. What
dost thou ? He works by an uncontrollable authority, he needs not ask
leave of any : Isa. xliii. 13, 'He works, and none can let it.' As when he
will relieve, none can afilict ; so when he will wound, none can relieve. If a
king appoint the punishment of a rebel, the greatest favourite in the court
cannot speak a comfortable word to him. The most beloved angel in heaven
cannot sweeten and ease the spirit of a man, that the sovereign power is set
against to make the butt of his wrath. The devils lie under his sentence,
and wear their chains as marks of their condemnation, without hope of
ever having them filed off, since they are laid upon them by the authority of
an unaccountable* Sovereign.

(3.) By his sovereign authority, God can make any creature the instru-
ment of his vengeance. He hath all the creatures at his beck, and can
commission any of them to be a dreadful scourge. ' Strong winds and tem-
pests fulfil his word, Ps. cxlviii. 8. The lightnings answer him at his call,
and cry aloud, ' Here are we,' Job xxxviii. 35. By his sovereign authority
he can render locusts as mischievous as lions, forge the meanest creatures
into swords and arrows, and commission the most despicable to be his exe-
cutioners ; he can cut off joy from our spirits, and make our own hearts be
our tormentors, our most confident friends our persecutors, our nearest rela-
tions to be his avengers. They are more his, who is their Sovereign, than
ours, who place a vain confidence in them. Bather than Abraham shall
want children, he can raise up stones, and adopt them into his family; and
rather than not execute his vengeance, he can array the stones in the streets,
and make them his armed subjects against us. If he sjieak the word, a hair
shall drop from our heads to choke us, or a vapour, congealed into rheum
in our heads, shall drop down and putrefy our vitals. He can never want
weapons, who is sovereign over the thunders of heaven, and stones of the
earth, over every creature, and can by a sovereign word turn our greatest
comforts into curses.

(4.) This punishment must be terrible. How doth David, a great king,
sound in his body, prosperous in his crown, and successful in his conquests,
settled in all his royal conveniences, groan under the wrathful touch of a
greater king than himself, Ps. vi., Ps. xxxviii., and his other penitential psalms ;
not being able to give himself a writ of ease, by all the delights of his palace
and kingdom. If ' the wrath of a king be as a roaring lion ' to a poor sub-
* That is, ' irresponsible.' — Ed.

480 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

ject, Prov. xix. 12, how great is the wrath of the King of kings, that cannot
be set forth by the terror of all the amazing vollej's of thunder that have
been since the creation, if the noise of all were gathered into one single
crack ! As there is an unconceivable ground of joy in the special favour of
so mighty a king, so is there of terror in his severe displeasure. Ps. Ixxvi. 12,
be is ' terrible to the kings of the earth, with God is terrible majesty.'
What a folly is it then to rebel against so mighty a sovereign !

Use 3. Of comfort. The throne of God drops honey and sweetness, as
well as dread and terror ; all his other attributes afford little relief, without
this of his dominion and universal command. When therefore he speaks of
his being the God of his people, he doth often preface it with ' the Lord
thy God ; ' his sovereignty as a lord being the ground of all the comfort we
can take in his federal relation as our God ; thy God, but superior to thee ;
thy God, not as thy cattle and goods are thine, in a way of sole propriety,
but a lord too in a way of sovereignty, not only over thee, but over all things
else for thee. As the end of God's settling earthly governments was for
the good of the communities over which the governors preside, so God
exerciseth his government for the good of the world, and more particularly
for the good of the church, over which he is a peculiar governor.

1. His love to his people is as great as his sovereignty over them. He
stands not upon his dominion with his people so much as upon his affection
to them; he would not be called Baali, my lord, i. e. he would not be known
only by the name of sovereignty, but Ishi, my husband, a name of authority
and sweetness together, Hosea ii. 16, 19, &c. He signifies that he is not
only the Lord of our spirits and bodies, but a husband by a marriage knot,
admitting us to a nearness to him, and communion of goods with him.
Though he majestically sits upon a high throne, yet it is a throne ' encircled
with a rainbow,' Ezek. i. 28, to shew that his government of his people is
not only in a way of absolute dominion, but also in a way of federal relation.
He seems to own himself their subject rather than their sovereign, when he
gives them a charter to command him in the affiiirs of his church : Isa.
xlv. 11, 'Ask of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the
work of my hands command you me.' Some read it by way of question, as
a corrective of a sauciness : Do you ask of me things to come, and seem to
command me concerning the works of my hands, as if you were more care-
ful of my interest among my people than I am, who have formed them ?
But if this were the sense, it would seem to discourage an importunity of
prayer for public deliverance, and therefore, to take it according to our
translation, it is an exhortation to prayer, and a mighty encouragement in
the management and exercise of it. Urge me with my promise in a way of
humble importunity, and you shall find me as willing to perform my word, and
gratify your desires, as if I were rather under your authority than you under
mine ; as much as to say, If I be not as good as my word to satisfy those
desires that are according to my promise, implead me at my own throne, and if
I be failing in it, I will give judgment against myself. Almost like prince's
charters, and gracious grants, ' we grant such a thing against us, and our
heirs,' giving the subject power to implead them, if they be not punctually
observed by them. How is the love of God seen in his condescension below
the majesty of earthly governors ! He that might command by the abso-
luteness of his authority, doth not only [not] do that, but entreats in the
quality of a subject, as if he had not a fulness to supply us, but needed
something from us for a supply of himself : 2 Cor. v. 20, ' As though God
did beseech you by us.' And when he may challenge as a due by the right
of his propi-iety, what we bestow upon his poor, which are his subjects as

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 481

well as ours, he reckons it as a loan to him, as if what we had were more
our own than his, Prov. xix. 17. He stands not upon his dominion so much
with us, when he finds us conscientious in paying the duty we owe to him.
He rules as a Father by love, as well as by authority ; he enters into a
peculiar communion with poor earthly worms, plants his gracious tabernacle
among the troops of sinners, instructs us by his word, invites us by his
benefits, admits us into his presence, is more desirous to bestow his smiles
than we to receive them, and acts in such a manner as if he were willing to
resign his sceptre into the hands of any that were possessed with more love
and kindness to us than himself. This is the comfort of believers.

2. In his being sovereign, his pardons carry in them a full security. He
that hath the keys of hell and death pardons the crime, and wipes ofi" the
guilt. Who can repeal the act of the chief governor ? What tribunal can
null the decrees of an absolute throne ? Isa. xliii. 25, ' I, even I, am he
that blots out thy transgressions for my name's sake.' His sovereign
dominion renders his mercy comfortable. The clemency of a subject, though
never so great, cannot pardon ; people may pity a criminal while the execu-
tioner tortures him, and strips him of his life, but the clemency of the
supreme prince establisheth a pardon. Since we are under the dominion of
God, if he pardons, who can reverse it ? If he doth not, what will the
pardons of men profit us in regard of an eternal state ? If God be a king
for ever, then he whom God forgives, he in whom God reigns, shall live for
ever ; else he would want subjects on earth, and have none of his lower
creatures, which he formed upon the earth, to reign over [after] the dissolu-
tion of the world. If his pardons did not stand secure, he would after this
life have no voluntary subjects that had formerly a being upon the earth ;
he would be a king only over the damned creatures.

3. Corruptions will certainly be subdued in his voluntary subjects. The
covenant, I will be your God, implies protection, government, andrelief, which
are all grounded upon sovereignty ; that therefore which is our greatest
burden will be removed by his sovereign power. Micah vii. 19, * He will
subdue our iniquities.' If the outward enemies of the church shall not
bear up against his dominion, and perpetuate their rebellions unpunished,
those within his people shall as little bear up against his throne without
being destroyed by him. The billows of our own hearts, and the raging
waves within us, are as much at his beck as those without us. And his
sovereignty is more eminent in quelling the corruptions of the heart than
the commotions of the world ; in reigning over men's spirits, by changing
them, or curbing them, more than over men's bodies, by pinching and
punishing them. The remainders of Satan's empire will moulder away before
him, since ' he that is in us ' is a greater sovereign ' than he that is in the
world,' 1 John iv. 4. His enemies will be laid at his feet, and so never
shall prevail against him, when his kingdom shall come. He could not be
Lord of any man as a happy creature, if he did not by his power make them
happy ; and he could not make them happy unless by his grace he made
them holy. He could not be praised as a Lord of glory, if he did not make
some creatures glorious to praise him ; and an earthly creatui-e could not
praise him perfectly, unless he had every grain of enmity to his glory taken
out of his heart. Since God is the only sovereign, he only can still the
commotions in our spirits, and pull down all the ensigns of the devil's
royalty ; he can waste him by the powerful word of his lips.

4. Hence is a strong encouragement for prayer. My Kiiiy was the strong
compellation David used in prayer, as an argument of comfort and confidence,
as well as that of my God : Ps. v. 2, ' Hearken to the voice of my cry, my

VOL. U. H h

482 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

King, and my God.' To bfi a king is to have an office of government and
protection. He gives us liberty to approach to him as the * Judge of all,'
Heb. xii. 23, i. e. as the governor of the world ; we pray to one that hath
the whole globe of heaven and earth in his hand, and can do whatsoever
he will. Though he be higher than the cherubims, and transcendently
above all in majesty, yet we may soar up to him with the wings of our
soul, faith, and love, and lay open our cause, and find him as gracious as if
he were the meanest subject on earth, rather than the most sovereign God
in heaven.

He hath as much of tenderness as he hath of authority, and is pleased
with prayer, which is an acknowledgment of his dominion, an honouring of
that which he delights to honour ; for prayer, in the notion of it, imports
thus much : that God is the rector of the world, that he takes notice of
human affairs, that he is a careful, just, wise governor, a storehouse of
blessing, a fountain of goodness to the indigent, and a relief to the
oppressed. What have we reason to fear, when the Sovereign of the world
gives us liberty to approach to him, and lay open our case ? That God who
is King of the whole earth, not only of a few villages or cities in the earth,
but the whole earth, and not only King of this dreggy place of our dross,
but of heaven, having prepared or established his throne in the most glori-
ous place of the creation.

5. Here is comfort in afflictions. As a sovereign, he is the author of
afflictions; as a sovereign, he can be the remover of them ; he can command
the waters of affliction to go so far, and no farther. If he speaks the word,
a disease shall depart, as soon as a servant shall from your presence with a
nod. If we are banished from one place, he can command a shelter for us
in another. If he orders Moab, a nation that had no great kindness for his
people, to let his outcasts dwell with them, they shall entertain them, and
afi'ord them sanctuary, Isa. xvi. 4. Again, God chasteneth as a sovereign,
but teacheth as a father, Ps. xc. 12. The exercise of his authority is not
without an exercise of his goodness. He doth not correct for his own plea-
sure, or the creature's torment, but for the creature's instruction ; though
the rod be in the hand of a sovereign, yet it is tinctured with the kindness
of divine bowels. He can order them as a sovereign to mortify our flesh,
and try our faith. In the severest tempest, the Lord that raised the wind
against us, which shattered the ship, and tore its rigging, can change that
contrary wind for a more happy one, to drive us into the port.

6. It is a comfort against the projects of the church's adversaries in times
of public commotions. The consideration of the divine sovereignty may
arm us against the threatenings of mighty ones, and the menaces of perse-
cutors. God hath authority above the crowns of men, and a wisdom
superior to the cabals of men. None can move a step without him, he hath
a negative voice upon their counsels, a negative hand upon their motions ;
their politic resolves must stop at the point he hath prescribed them. Their
formidable strength cannot exceed the limits he hath set them, their over-
reaching wisdom expires at the breath of God : ' There is no wisdom, nor
understanding, nor counsel against the Lord,' Prov. xxi. 30. Not a bullet
can be discharged, nor a sword drawn, a wall battered, nor a person des-
patched out of the world, without the leave of God, by the mightiest in the
world. The instruments of Satan are no more free from his sovereign
restraint than their inspirer ; they cannot pull the hook out of their nostrils,
nor cast the bridle out of their mouths. This sovereign can shake the earth,
rend the heavens, overthrow mountains, the most mountainous opposer of
his interest. Though the nations rush in against his people, like the rush-

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 483

ing of many waters, ' God shall rebuke them, they shall be chased as the
chaff of the mountains before the wind ; and like a rolling thing before the
whirlwind,' Isa. xvii. 13; so doth he often burst in pieces the most mis-
chievous designs, and conducts the oppressed to a happy port. He ofteu
turns the severest tempests into a calm, as weU as the most peaceful calm
into a horrible storm. How often hath a well-rigged ship, that seemed to
spurn the sea under her feet, and beat the waves before her to a foam, been
swallowed up into the bowels of that element, over whose back she rode a
little before ! God never comes to deliver his church as a governor, but in
a WTathful posture : Ezek. xx. 33, ' Surely, saith the Lord, with a mighty
hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule
over you ; ' not with fury poured out upon the church, but fury poured out
upon her enemies, as the wards following evidence. The church he would
bring out from the countries where she was scattered, and bring the people
into the bond of the covenant. He sometimes ' cuts off the spirits of princes,'
Ps. Ixxvi. 12, i. e. cuts off their designs, as men do the pipes of a water-
course. The hearts of all are as open to him, as the riches of heaven where
he resides. He can slip an inclination into the heart of the mighty, which
they dreamed not of before ; and if he doth not change their projects, he can
make them abortive, and way-lay them in their attempts. Laban marched
with fury, but God put a padlock upon his passion against Jacob, Gen.
xxxi. 24-29. The devils which ravage men's minds must be still when he
gives out his sovereign orders. This sovereign can make his people find
favour in the eyes of the cruel Egyptians, which had so long oppressed
them, Exod. xi. 3; and speak a good word in the heart of Nebuchadnezzar for
the prophet Jeremiah, tliat he should order his captain to take him into his
special protection-, when he took Zedekiah away prisoner in chains, and put
out his eyes, Jer. xxxix. 11. His people cannot want deliverance from him,
who hath all the world at his command, when he is pleased to bestow it : he
hath as many instruments of deliverance as he hath creatures at his beck in
heaven or earth, from the meanest to the highest. As he is the Lord of
hosts, the church hath not only an interest in the strength he himself is
possessed with, but in the strength of all the creatures that are under his com-
mand, in the elements below and angels above ; in those armies of heaven,
and in the inhabitants of the earth, he doth what he will, Dan. iv. 35. They
are all in order and array at his command. There are angels to employ in
a fatal stroke, lice and frogs to quell the stubborn hearts of his enemies.
He can range his thunders and lightnings, the cannon and granadoes of
heaven, and the worms of the earth in his service.. He can muzzle lions, calm
the fury of the fire, turn his enemies' swords into their- own bowels, and their
artillery on their own breasts ; set the wind in their teeth,, and make their
chariot-wheels languish ; make the sea enter a quarrel with them, and wrap
them in its waves, till it hath stifled them in its lap. The angels have
storms, and tempests, and wars in their hands, but at the disposal of God ;
when they shall cast them out against the empire of antichrist, Kev. viL 1, 2,
then shall Satan be discharged from his, throne, and no more seduce the
nations ; the everlasting gospel shall be preached, and God shall reign glori-
ously in Zion. Let us therefore shelter ourselves in the divine sovereignty,
regard God as the most high in our dangers, and in our petitions. This
was David's resolution : Ps. Ivii. 1,2, 'I will cry unto God most high.'
This dominion of God is the true tower of David, wherein there are a thou-
sand shields for defence and encouragement. Cant. iv. 4.

Use 4. If God hath an extensive dominion over the whole world, this
ought to be often meditated on, and acknowledged by us. This is the uni-

484 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

versal duty of mankind : if he be the sovereign of all, we should frequently
think of our great prince, and acknowledge ourselves his subjects, and him
our Lord. God will be acknowledged the Lord of the whole earth ; the
neglect of this is the cause of the judgments which are sent upon the world.
All the prodigies were to this end, that they might know, or acknowledge,
that God was the Lord, Exod. x. 2, As God was proprietor, he demanded
the first-born of every Jew, and the first-born of every beast ; the one was to
be redeemed, and the other sacrificed ; this was the quit-rent they were to
pay to him for their fruitful land. The first fruits of the earth were ordered to
be paid to him as a homage due to the landlord, and an acknowledgment
they held all in chief of him. The practice of offering first-fruits for an
acknowledgment of God's sovereignty was among many of the heathens, and
very ancient ; hence they dedicated some of the chief of their spoils, owning
thereby the dominion and goodness of God, whereby they had gained the
victory. Cain owned this in offering the fruits of the earth, and it was his
sin he owned no more, viz. his being a sinner, and meriting the justice of
God, as his brother Abel did in his blood}^ sacrifice. God was a sovereign
proprietor and governor, while man was in a state of innocence ; but when
man proved a rebel, the sovereignty of God bore another relation towards
him, that of a judge, added to the other. The first fruits might have been
offered to God in a state of innocence, as a homage to him as Lord of the
manor of the world ; the design of them was to own God's propriety in all
things, and men's dependence on him for the influences of heaven in pro-
ducing the fruits of the earth, which he had ordered for their use. The
design of sacrifices, and placing beasts instead of the criminal, was to acknow-
ledge their own guilt, and God as a sovereign judge. Cain owned the first,
but not the second ; he acknowledged his dependency on God as a proprie-
tor, but not his obnoxiousness to God as a judge, which may be probably
gathered from his own speech, when God came to examine him, and ask
him for his brother. Gen. iv. 9, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Why do
you ask me ? Though I own thee as the Lord of my land and goods, yet I
do not think myself accountable to thee for all my actions. This sove-
reignty of God ought to be acknowledged in all the parts of it, in all the
manifestations of it to the creature. We should bear a sense of this always
upon our spirits, and be often in the thoughts of it in our retirements. We
should fancy that we saw God upon his throne in his royal garb, and great
attendants about him, and take a view of it, to imprint an awe upon our
spirits.

The meditation on this would,

1. Fix us on him as an object of trust. It is upon his sovereign dominion,
as much as upon anything, that safe and secure confidence is built ; for if
he had any superior above him to control him in his designs and promises,
his veracity and power would be of little efficacy to form our souls to a close
adherency to him. It were not fit to make him the object of our trust, that
can be gainsaid by a higher than himself, and had not a full authority to
answer our expectations. If we were possessed with this notion fully and
believingly, that God' were high above all, and his kingdom rules over all, we
should not catch at every broken reed, and stand gaping for comforts from a
pebble stone. He that understands the authority of a king, would not waive
a reliance on his promise, to depend upon the breath of a changeling favourite.
None but an ignorant man would change the security he may have upon the
height of a rock, to expect it from the dwarfishness of a molehill. To put
confidence in any inferior lord more than in the prince, is a folly in civil
converse, but a rebellion in divine ; God only being above all, can only rule all,

Ps. cm. 19. J god's dominion. 485

can command things to help us, and check other things which we depend
on, and make them fall short of our expectations. The due consideration of
this doctrine would make us pierce through second causes to the first, and
look further than to the smaller sort of sailors, that climb the ropes, and
dress the sails, to the pilot that sits at the helm, the master that, by an in-
disputable authority, orders all their motions. We should not depend upon
second causes for our support, but look beyond them, to the authority of the
Deity, and the dominion he hath over all the works of his hands. Zech.
X. 1, * Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain,' When the
seasons of the year conspire for the producing such an effect, when the usual
time of rain is wheeled about in the year, stop not your thoughts at the point
of the heavens, whence you expect it, but pierce the heavens and solicit
God, who must give order for it before it comes. The due meditation of all
things depending on the divine dominion would strike off our hands from
all other holds, so that no creature would engross the dependence and
trust which is due to the first cause. As we do not thank the heavens when
they pour out rain, so we are not to depend upon them when we want it ;
God is to be sought to when the womb of second causes is opened to relieve
us, as well as when the womb of second causes is barren, and brings not
forth its wonted progeny.

2. It would make us diligent in worship. The consideration of God as
the supreme Lord is the foundation of all religion. Our Father n-hich art
in heaven prefaceth the Lord's prayer. Father is a name of authority ; in
heaven, the place where he hath fixed his throne, notes his government; not
mij Father, but our Father, notes the extent of this authority. In all wor-
ship, we acknowledge the object of our worship our Lord, and ourselves his
vassals. If we bear a sense that he is our sovereign King, it would draw us
to him in every exigence, and keep us with him in a reverential posture in
every address. When we come, we should be careful not to violate his
right, but render him the homage due to his royalty. We should not
appear before him with empty souls, but filled with holy thoughts. We
should bring him the best of our flock, and present him with the prime of
our strength. Were we sensible we hold all of him, we should not withhold
anything from him which is more worthy than another. Our hearts would
be framed into an awful regard of him, when we consider that ' glorious and
fearful name, the Lord our God,' Deut. xxviii. 58. We should ' look to our
feet' when we enter into his house, if we considered him in heaven upon his
throne, and ourselves on earth at his footstool, Eccles. v. 2, lower before
him than a worm before an angel ; it would hinder garishness and lightness.
The Jews, saith Capel, on the 1 Tim. i. 17, repeat this expression, *^?D
D7lJ-'n, King of worlds, or eternal King ; probable the first original of it might
be to stake them down from wandering. When we consider the majesty of
God, clothed with a robe of light, sitting upon his high throne, adorned with
his royal ensigns, we should not enter into the presence of so great a Majesty
with the sacrifice of fools, with light motions and foolish thoughts, as if he
were one of our companions to be drolled with. We should not hear his
word as if it were the voice of some ordinary peasant. The consideration of
majesty would engender reverence in our service. It would also make us
speak of God with honour and respect, as of a great and glorious king, and
not use defaming expressions of him, as if he were an infamous being.
And were he considered as a terrible majesty, he would not be frequently
solicited by some to pronounce a damnation upon them upon every occasion.
3. It would make us charitable to others. Since he is our Lord, the

486 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

great proprietor of the world, it is fit he should have a part of our goods as
well as our time, he being the Lord both of our goods and time. The Lord
is to be honoured with our substance, Prov. iii. 9. Kings were not to be
approached to without a present. Tribute is due to kings ; but because he
hath no need of any from us to bear up his state, maintain the charge of his
wars, or pay his military officers and host, it is a debt due to him to acknow-
ledge him in his poor, to sustain those that are part of his substance ; though
he stands in no need of it himself, yet the poor, that we have always with us,
do. As a seventh part of our weekly time, so some .part of our weekly gains
are due to him. There was to be a weekly laying by in store somewhat of
what God had prospered them for the relief of others, 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2; the
quantity is not determined, that is left to every man's conscience, ' accord-
ing as God hath prospered him ' that week. If we did consider God as the
donor and proprietor, we should dispose of his gifts according to the design
of the true owner, and act in our places as stewards entrusted by him, and
not purse up his part as well as our own in our coffers. We should not deny
him a small quit-rent as an acknowledgment that we have a greater income
from him ; we should be ready to give the inconsiderable pittance he doth
require of us, as an acknowledgment of his propriety as well as liberality.

4. It would make us watchful, and arm us against all temptations. Had
Eve stuck to her first argument against the serpent, she had not been in-
strumental to that destruction which mankind yet feel the smart of: Gen.
iii. 3, ' God hath said ye shall not eat of it ; ' the great governor of the
world hath laid his sovereign command upon us in this point. The tempta-
tion gained no ground till her heart let go the sense of tliis for the pleasure
of her eye and palate. The repetition of this. The great Lord of the world
hath said or ordered, had both unargumented and disarmed the tempter.
A sense of God's dominion over us would discourage a temptation, and put
it out of countenance ; it would bring us with a vigorous strength to beat it
back to a retreat. If this were as strongly urged as temptation, it would
make the heart of the tempted strong, and the motion of the tempter feeble.

5. It would make us entertain afflictions as they ought to be entertained,
viz., with a respect to God. When men make light of any affliction from
God, it is a contempt of his sovereignty ; as to contemn the frown, dis-
pleasure, and check of a prince is an affront to majesty ; it is as if they did
not care a straw what God did with them, but dare him to do his worst.
There is a despising the chastening of the Almighty, Job v. 17. To be
unhumbled under his hand is as much or more affront to him than to be
impatient under it. Afflictions must be entertained as a check from heaven,
as a frown from the great monarch of the M'orld ; under the feeling of every
stroke, we are to acknowledge his sovereignty and bounty ; to despise it is
to make light of his authority over us, as to despise his favours is to make
light of his kindness to us. A sense of God's dominion would make us
observe every check from him, and not diminish his authority by casting off
a due sense of his correction.

6. This dominion of God would make us resign up ourselves to God in
everything. He that considers himself a thing made by God, a vassal under
his authority, would not expostulate with him, and call him to an account
why he hath dealt so or so with him. It would stab the vitals of all pleas
against him. We should not then contest with him, but humbly lay our
cause at his feet, and say with Eli, 1 Sam. iii. 18, * It is the Lord, let him
do what seems good.' We should not commence a suit against God when
he doth not answer our prayers presently, and send the mercy we want upon
the wings of the wind ; he is the Lord, the Sovereign. The consideration

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 487

of this would put an end to our quarrels with God. Should I expect that
the monarch of the world should wait upon me, or I, a poor worm, wait
upon him ? Mast I take state upon me before the throne of heaven, and
expect the King of kings should lay by his sceptre to gratify my humour ?
Surely Jonah thought God no more than his fellow, or his vassal, at that
time when he told him to his face he did well to be angry, as though God
might not do what he pleased with so small a thing as a gourd ; he speaks as
if he would have sealed a lease of ejectment, to exclude him from any pro-
priety in anything in the world.

7, This dominion of God would stop our vain curiosity. When Peter was
desirous to know the fate of John, the beloved disciple, Christ answereth no
more than this : John xxi, 22, ' If I will that he tarry till I come, what is
that to thee ? follow thou me.' Consider your duty, and lay aside your
curiosity, since it is my pleasure not to reveal it. The sense of God's
absolute dominion would silence many vain disputes in the world. What if
God will not reveal this or that ? The manner and method of his resolves
should humble the creature under intruding inquiries.

Use 5. Of exhortation.

1. The doctrine of the dominion of God may teach us humility. We are
never truly abased but by the consideration of the eminence and excellency
of the Deity. Job never thought himself so pitiful a thing, so despicable a
creature, as after God's magnificent declamation upon the theme of his own
sovereignty. Job xlii. 5, 6. When God's name is regarded as the most
excellent and sovereign name in all the earth, then is the soul in the fittest
temper to lie low, and cry out, What is man, that so great a Majesty should
be mindful of him ? When Abraham considers God as the supreme judge
of all the earth, he then owns himself ' but dust and ashes,' Gen. xviii. 25,
27. Indeed, how can vile and dusty man vaunt before God, when the
angels, fiir more excellent creatures, cannot stand before him but with a veil
on their faces ? How little a thing is man in regard of all the earth ! How
mean a thing is the earth in regard of the vaster heavens ! How poor a
thing is the whole world in comparison of God ! How pitiful a thing is
man, if compared with so excellent a majesty ! There is as great a distance
between God and man as between being and not being ; and the more man
considers the divine royalty, the more disesteem he will have of himself. It
would make him stoop, and disrobe himself, and fall low before the throne
of the King of kings, throwing down before his throne any crown he gloried
in, Rev. iv. 10.

(1.) In regard of authority. How unreasonable is pride in the presence
of majesty. How foolish is it for a country justice of peace to think himself
as great as his prince that commissioned him. How unreasonable is pride
in the presence of the greatest sovereignty. What is human greatness before
divine ? The stars discover no light when the sun appears, but in an
humble posture withdraw in their lesser beams, to give the sole glory of
enlightening the world to the sun, who is, as it were, the sovereign of those
stars, and imparts a light unto them. The greatest prince is infinitely less,
if compared with God, than the meanest scullion in his kitchen can be
before him. As the wisdom, goodness, and holiness of man is a mere mote
compared to the goodness and holiness of God, so is the authority of man a
mere trifie in regard of the sovereignty of God. And who but a simple
child would be proud of a mote or trifle. Let man be as great as he can,
and command others, he is still a subject to one greater than himself.
Pride would then vanish like smoke at the serious consideration of this
sovereignty.

488 chaenock's works. [Ps, CIII. 19.

One of the kings of this country did very handsomely sharoe the flattery
of his courtiers, that cried him up as lord of sea and land, by ordering his
chair to be set on the sand of the sea- shore when the tide was coming in,
and commanding the waters not to touch his feet, which, when they did,
without any regard to his authority, he took occasion thereby to put his
flatterers out of countenance, and instruct himself in a lesson of humility.
See, saith he, how I rule all things, when so mean a thing as the water will
not obey me. It is a ridiculous pride that the Turk and Persian discover
in their swelling titles. What poor sovereigns are they, that cannot com-
mand a cloud, give out an effectual order for a drop of rain in a time of
drought, or cause the bottles of heaven to turn their mouth another way in
a time of too much moisture. Yet their own prerogatives are so much in
their minds, that they jostle out all thoughts of the supreme prerogative of
God, and give thereby occasion to frequent rebellions against him.

(2.) In regard of propriety. And this doctrine is no less an abatement
of pride in the highest as well as in the meanest. It lowers pride in point
of propriety, as well as in point of authority. Is any proud of his posses-
sions ? How many lords of those possessions have gone before you !* How
many are to follow you ! Your dominion lasts but for a short time, too
short to be a cause of any pride and glory in it. God, by a sovereign power,
can take you from them, or them from you, when he pleaseth. The
traveller refresheth himself in the heat of summer under a shady tree ; how
many have done so before him the same day he knows not, and how many
will have the benefit after, before night comes, he is as much ignorant of.
He, and the others that went before him, and follow after him, use it for
their refreshment, but none of them can say they are the lords of it. The
property is invested in some other person, whom perhaps they know not.
The propriety of all you have is in God, not truly in yourselves. Doth not
that man deserve scorn from you who will play the proud fool in gay clothes
and attire, which are known to be none of his own, but borrowed ? Is it
not the same case with every proud man, though he hath a property in his
goods by the law of the land ? Is anything you have your own truly ? Is
it not lent you by the great Lord ? Is it not the same vanity in any of you
to be proud of what you have as God's loan to you, as for such a one to be
proud of what he hath borrowed of man ? And do you not make yourselves
as ridiculous to angels and good men, who know that though it is yours in
opposition to man, yet it is not yours in opposition to God ; they are granted
you only for your use, as the crAlur of essea^ and sxiord, and other ensigns of
the chief magistrate in the city, pass through many hands in regard of the
use of them, but the propriety remains in the community and body of the
city ; or as the silver plate of a person that invites you to a feast is for
your use during the time of the invitation. What ground is there to be
proud of those things ? You are not the absolute lords and proprietors of,
but only have the use of them granted to you during the pleasure of the
Sovereign of the world.

2. Praise and thankfulness results from this doctrine of the sovereignty
of God.

(1.) He is to be praised for his royalty : Ps. cxlv. 1, ' I will extol thee
my God, 0 King.' The psalmist calls upon men five times to sing praise
to him as the King of all the earth : Ps. xlvii. 6, 7, ' Sing praises to God,
eing praises; sing praises to our lung, sing praises. For God is the King of

* Eaynard de Deo, p. 766.

t That is, a coJlar made of liuks in the form of the letter S.— En.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 489

all the earth; sing ye praises with understanding.' All creatures, even the
inanimate ones, are called upon to praise him, because of the excellency of
his name, and the supremacy of his glory, in the 148th Psalm throughout,
and ver, 13. That sovereign power that gave us hearts and tongues
deserves to have them employed in his praises, especially since he hath
by the same hand given us so great matter for it. As he is a sovereign,
we owe him thankfulness [that] he doth not deal with us in a way of
absolute dominion ; he might then have annihilated us, since he hath as
full a dominion to reduce us to nothing as to bring us out of nothing.
Consider the absoluteness of his sovereignty in itself, and you must needs
acknowledge that he might have multiplied precepts, enjoined us the
observance of more than he hath done ; he might have made our tether
much shorter ; he might exact obedience, and promise no reward for it ; he
might dash us against the walls as a potter doth his vessel, and no man
have any just reason to say. What dost thou ? or Why dost thou use me so ?
A greater right is in him to use us in such a manner, as we do sensible as
well as insensible things. And if you consider his dominion, as it is
capable to be exercised in a way of unquestionable justice, and submitted to
the reason and judgments of creatures, he might have dealt with us in a
smarter way than he hath hitherto done ; instead of one affliction, we might
have had a thousand. He might have shut his own hands from pouring out
any good upon us, and ordered innumerable scourges to be prepared for
us ; but he deals not with us according to the rights of his dominion. He
doth not oppress us by the greatness of his majesty; he enters into covenant
with us, and allures us by the cords of a man, and shews himself as much
a merciful as an absolute sovereign.

(2.) As he is a proprietor, we owe him thankfulness. He is at his own
choice, whether he will bestow upon us any blessings or no ; the more value
therefore his benefits deserve from us, and the donor the more sincere re-
turns. If we have anything from the creature to serve our turn, it is by
the order of the chief proprietor. He is the spring of honour, and the
fountain of supphes ; all creatures are but as the conduit-pipes in a great
city, \\hich serve several houses with water, but from the great spring. All
things are conveyed originally from his own hand, and are dispensed from
his exchequer. If this great Sovereign did not order them, you would have
no more supplies from a creature, than you could have nourishment from a
chip. It is the divine will in everything that doth us good ; every favour
from creatures is but a smile from God, an evidence of his royalty, to move
us to pay a respect to him as the great Lord. Some heathens had so much
respect for God, as to conclude that his will, and not their own prudence,
was the chief conductor of their aHairs. His goodness to us calls for our
thankfulness, but his sovereignty calls for a higher elevation of it ; a smile
from a prince is more valued, and thought worthy of more gratitude, than
a present from a peasant. A small gift from a great person is more gratefully
to be received, than a larger from an inferior person. The condescension of
royalty magnifies the gift. ' What is man, that thou,' so great a majesty,
• art mindful of him,' to bestow this or that favour upon him, is but a due
reflection upon every blessing we receive. Upon every fresh blessing we
should acknowledge the donor and true proprietor, and give him the honour
of his dominion. His property ought to be thankfully owned in everythuig
we are capable of consecrating to him. As David, after the liberal collection
he had made for the building of the temple, owns in his dedication of it to
that use the propriety of God, 1 Chron. xxix. 14, ' Who am I, and what is
my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort ? for

490 charnock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.' It was but
a return of God's own to him, as the waters of the river are no other than
the return to the sea of what was taken from it.

Praise and thankfulness is a rent due from all mankind, and from every
creature, to the great landlord, since all are tenants, and hold by him at his
will. ' Every creature in heaven and earth, under the earth, and in the sea,'
were heard by John to ascribe ' blessing, honour, glory, and power to him
that sits on the throne,' Rev. v. 13. We are as much bound to the sove-
reignty of God for his preservation of us, as for his creation of us. We are
no less obliged to him, that preserves our beings, when exposed to dangers,
than we are for bestowing a being upon us, when we were not capable of
danger. Thankfulness is due to this sovereign for public concerns : hath he
not preserved the ship of his church in the midst of whistling winds and
roaring waves, in the midst of the combats of men and devils, and rescued it
often when it hath been near shipwrecked ?

3. How should we be induced from hence to promote the honour of this
sovereign ? We should advance him as supreme, and all our actions should
concur in his honour. We should return to his glory what we have re-
ceived from his sovereignty, and enjoy by his mercy. He that is the
superior of all, ought to be the end of all. This is the harmony of the
creation, that which is of an inferior nature is ordered to the service of that
which is of a more excellent nature ; thus water and earth, that have a lower
being, are employed for the honour and beauty of the plants of the earth,
who are more excellent in having a principle of a growing life ; these plants
are again subservient to the beasts and birds, which exceed them in a prin-
ciple of sense, which the others want ; those beasts and birds are ordered
for the good of man, who is superior to them in a principle of reason, and
is invested with a dominion over them ; man having God for his superior,
ought as much to serve the glory of God, as other things are designed to be
useful to man. Other governments are intended for the good of the com-
munity, the chief end is not the good of the governors themselves ; but
God being every way sovereign, — the sovereign being, giving being to all
things ; the sovereign ruler, giving order and preservation to all things, —
is also the end of all things, to whose glory and honour all things, all
creatures are to be subservient. Rom. xi. 36, * For of him, and through
him, and to him, are all things, to whom be glory for ever :' of him, as the
efficient cause ; through him, as the preserving cause ; to him, as the final
cause. All our actions and thoughts ought to be addressed to his glory, our
whole beings ought to be consecrated to his honour, though we should have
no reward, but the honour of having been subservient to the end of our
creation ; so much doth the excellency and majesty of God, infinitely ele-
vated above us, challenge of us. Subjects use to value the safety, honour,
and satisfaction of a good prince above their own ; David is accounted worth
ten thousand of the people, and some of his courtiers thought themselves
obliged to venture their lives for his satisfaction in so mean a thing as a
little water from the well of Bethlehem. Doth not so great, so good a
sovereign as God, deserve the same afiection from us ? Do we swear, saith
a heathen, to prefer none before Ccesar, and have we not greater reason to
prefer none before God ?* It is a justice due from us to God, to maintain
his glory, as it is a justice to preserve the right and property of another. As
God would lay aside his Deity, if he did deny himself, so a creature acts
irregularly, and out of the rank of a creature, if it doth not deny itself for
God. He that makes himself his own end, makes himself his own sovereign.
* Arriau in Epictet.

Ps. cm. 19.j god's dominion. 491

To napkin up a gift he hath bestowed upon us, or to employ what we pos-
sess, solely to our own glory, to use anything barely for ourselves, without
respect to God, is to apply it to a wrong use, and to injure God in his pro-
priety, and the end of his donation. What we have, ought to be used for
the honour of God ; he retains the dominion and lordship, though he grants
us the use ; we are but stewards, not proprietors, in regard of God, who
expects an account from us, how we have employed his goods to his honour.
The kingdom of God is to be advanced by us : we are to pray that his king-
dom may come, we are to endeavour that his kingdom may come ; that is,
that God may be known to be the chief sovereign ; that his dominion, which
was obscured by Adam's fall, may be more manifested ; that his subjects
which are suppressed in the world, may be supported, his laws which are
violated by the rebellions of men, may be more obeyed, and his enemies be
fully subdued by his final judgment, the last evidence of his dominion in
this state of the world ; that the empire of sin and the devil may be abolished,
and the kingdom of God be perfected ; that none may rule but the great and
rightful sovereign. Thus, while we endeavour to advance the honour of his
throne, we shall not want an honour to ourselves. He is too gracious a
sovereign to neglect them that are mindful of his glory ; ' those that honour
him, he will honour,' 1 Sam. ii. 30.

4. Fear and reverence of God in himself, and in his actions, is a duty
incumbent on us from this doctrine : Jer. x. 7, ' Who would not fear thee,
0 King of nations !' The ingratitude of the world is taxed, in not reverenc-
ing God as a great king, who had given so many marks of his royal govern-
ment among them. The prophet wonders there was no fear of so great a
King in the world, since among all the wise men of the nations, and among
all their kings, there is none like unto this ; no more reverence of him, since
none ruled so wisely, nor any ruled so graciously. The dominion of God
is one of the first sparks that gives fire to religion and worship, considered
with the goodness of this sovereign : Ps. xxii. 27, 28, ' All the nations shall
worship before thee, for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he is governor among
the nations.' Epicurus, who thought God careless of human affairs, leaving
them at hap-hazard to the conduct of men's wisdom, and mutability of
fortune, yet acknowledged that God ought to be worshipped by man for the
excellency of his nature, and greatness of his majesty. How should we
reverence that God, that hath a throne encompassed with such glorious
creatures as angels, whose faces we are not able to behold, though shadowed in
assumed bodies ! How should we fear the Lord of hosts, that hath so many
armies at his command in the heavens above, and in the earth below, whom he
can dispose to the exact obedience of his will ! How should men be afraid to
censure any of his actions, to sit judge of their Judge, and call him to an
account to their bar ! How should such an earth-worm, a mean animal as
man^be afraid to speak irreverently of so great a king among his pots and
strumpets ! Not to fear him, not to reverence him, is to pull his throne
from under him, and make him of a lower authority than ourselves, or any
creature that we can reverence more.

5. Prayer to God, and trust in him, is inferred from his sovereignty. If
he be the supreme sovereign, holding heaven and earth in his hand, dispos-
ing all things here below, not committing every thing to the influence of the
stars, or the humours of men, we ought then to apply ourselves to him in
every case, implore the exercise of his authority ; we hereby own his peculiar
right over all things and persons. He only is the supreme head in all causes
and over all persons; 2 hive is (he kinf/dom concludes the Lord's prayers,
both as a motive to pray, Mat. \i. 13, and a ground to expect what we want.

492 chaknock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

He that believes not God's government, will think it needless to call upon
him, will expect no refuge under him in a strait, but make some creature-
reed his support. If we do not seek to him, but rely upon the dominion
we have over our own possessions, or upon the authority of anything else,
we disown his supremacy and dominion over all things ; we have as good an
opinion of ourselves, or of some creature, as we ought to have of God. We
think om-selves, or some natural cause we seek to, or depend upon, as much
sovereigns as he, and that all things which concern us are as much at the
dispose of an inferior, as of the great Lord. It is indeed to make a God of
ourselves, or of the creature ; when we seek to him upon all occasions, we
own this divine eminency, we acknowledge that it is by him men's hearts
are ordered, the world governed, all things disposed ; and God, that is
jealous of his glory, is best pleased with any duty in the creature that doth
acknowledge and desire the glorification of it, which prayer and dependence
on him doth in a special manner, desiring the exercise of his authority,
and the preservation of it, in ordering the affairs of the world.

6. Obedience naturally results from this doctrine. As his justice requires
fear, his goodness thankfulness, his faithfulness trust, his truth belief, so
his sovereignty, in the nature of it, demands obedience. As it is most fit he
should rule in regard of his excellency, so it is most fit we should obey him
in regard of his authority. He is our Lord, and we his subjects ; he is our
Master, and we his servants ; it is righteous we should observe him, and
conform to his will. He is everything that speaks an authority to command
us, and that can challenge an humility in us to obey. As that is the truest
doctrine that subjects us most to God, so he is the truest Christian that
doth in his practice most acknowledge this subjection. And as sovereignty
is the first notion a creature can have of God, so obedience is the first and
chief thing conscience reflects upon the creature. Man holds all of God,
and therefore owes all the operations capable to be produced by those
faculties to that sovereign power that endowed him with them. Man had
no being but for him, he hath no motion without him ; he should therefore
have no being but for him, and no motion but according to him. To call
him Lord, and not to act in subjection to him, is to mock and put a scorn
upon him : Luke vi. 46, ' Why call you me Lord, Lord, and do not the
things that I say ? ' It is like the crucifying Christ under the title of a king.
It is not by professions, but by observance of the laws of a prince, that we
manifest a due respect to him. By that, we reverence that authority that
enacted them, and the prudence that framed them.

This doctrine affords us motives to obey, and directs us to the manner of
obedience.

Motives to obey.

1. It is comely and orderly. Is it not a more becoming thing to be ruled
by the will of our sovereign, than by that of our lusts ? to observe a wise
and gracious authority, than to set up inordinate appetites in the room of
his law ? Would not all men account it a disorder to be abominated, to see
a slave or vassal control the just orders of his lord, and endeavour to subject
his master's will to his own ? Much more to expect God should serve our
humour, rather than we be regulated by his will. It is more orderly that
subjects should obey their governors, than governors their subjects ; that
passion should obey reason, than reason obey passion. When good gover-
nors are to conform to subjects, and reason veil to passion, it is monstrous ;
the one disturbs the order of a community, and the other defaceth the beauty
of the soul. Is it a comely thing for God to stoop to our meanness, or for
us to stoop to his greatness ?

Ps. cm. 19.] god's domnion. 493

2. In regard of the divine sovereignty, it is both honourable and advan-
tageous to obey God. It is indeed the glory of a superior to be obeyed by
his inferior, but where the sovereign is of transcendent excellency and dignity,
it is an honour to a mean person to be under his immediate commands, and
enrolled in his service. It is more honour to be God's subject than to be
the greatest worldly monarch ; his very service is an empire, and disobedience
to him is a slavery. It is a part of his sovereignty to reward any service
done to him.* Other lords may be willing to recompense the service of
their subjects, but are often rendered unable ; but nothing can stand in the
way of God to hinder your reward, if nothing stand in your way to hinder
your obedience : Levit. xviii. 5, ' If you keep mj statutes, you shall live in
them; I am the Lord.' Is there anything in the world can recompense you
for rebellion against God and obedience to a lust ? Saul cools the hearts of
his servants from running after David, by David's inability to give them
fields and vineyards : 1 Sam. xxii. 7, ' Will the son of Jesse give every one
of you fields and vineyards, and make you captains of thousands, and cap-
tains of hundreds, that you have conspired against me ?' But God hath a
dominion to requite, as well as authority to command your obedience. He
is a great sovereign, to bear you out, in your observance of his precepts,
against all reproaches and violences of men, and at last to crown you with
eternal honour. If he should neglect vindicating one time or other your
loyalty to him, he wall neglect the maintaining and vindicating his own sove-
reignty and greatness.

3. God, in all his dispensations to man, was careful to preserve the rights
of his sovereignty, in exacting obedience of his creature. The second thing
he manifested his sovereignty in was that of a lawgiver to Adam ; after that
of a proprietor, in giving him the possession of the garden ; one followed
immediately the other : Gen. ii. 16, 16, ' The Lord God took the man, and
put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it. And the Lord commanded the
man, saying. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it,' &c. Nothing
was to be enjoyed by man but upon the condition of obedience to his Lord ;
and it is observed, that in the description of the creation, God is not called
Lord till the finishing of the creation, and particularly in the forming of
man : Gen. ii. 7, ' And the Lord God formed man.' Though he was Lord
of all creatures, yet it was in man he would have his sovereignty particularly
manifested, and by man have his authority specially acknowledged. The
law is prefaced with this title, ' I am the Lord thy God,' Exod. xx. 2 :
authority in Lord, sweetness in God; the one to enjoin, the other to allure,
obedience ; and God enforceth several of the commands with the same title.
And as he begins many precepts with it, so he concludes them with the same
title, ' I am the Lord,' Lev. xix. 37, and in other places.

In all his communications of his goodness to man in his ways of blessing
them, he stands upon the preservation of the rights of his sovereignty, and
manifests his graciousness in favour of his authority. ' I am the Lord your
God ;' your God in all my perfections for your advantage, but yet your sove-
reign for your obedience. In all his condescensions he will have the rights
of this untouched and unviolated by us. When Christ would give the most
pregnant instance of his condescending and humble kindness, he urgeth his
authority, to ballast their spirits from any presumptuous eruptions because
of his humility ; John xiii. 18, ' You call me Master and Lord, and you say
well, for so I am.' He asserts his authority, and presseth them to their
duty, when he had seemed to lay it for the demeanour of a servant, and had
* Serviro Deo, regnare est.

494 charnock's works. [Ps. GUI. 19.

below the dignity of a master put on the humility of a mean underling, to
wash the disciples' feet, all which was to oblige them to perform the com-
mand he then gave them, ver. 14, in obedience to his authority and imitation
of his example. *

4. All creatures obey him. All creatures punctually observe the law he
hath imprinted on their nature, and in their several capacities acknowledge
him their sovereign ; they move according to the inclinations he imprinted
on them. The sea contains itself in its bounds, and the sun steps not out
of his sphere ; the stars march in their order, ' they continue this day according
to thy ordinance, for all are thy servants,' Ps. cxix. 91. If he orders things
contrary to their primitive nature, they obey him. When he speaks the
word, the devouring fire becomes gentle, and toucheth not a hair of the
children he will preserve ; the hunger-starved lions suspend their ravenous
nature, when so good a morsel as Daniel is set before them ; and the sun,
which had been in perpetual motion since its creation, obeys the writ of ease
God sent in Joshua's time, and stands still. Shall insensible and sensible
creatures be punctual to his orders, passively acknowledge his authority ?
Shall lions and serpents obey God in their places, and shall not man, who
can by reason argue out the sovereignty of God, and understand the sense
and goodness of his laws, and actively obey God with that will he hath
enriched him with above all other creatures ? Yet the truth is, every sensitive,
yea, every senseless creature, obeys God more than his rational, more than
his gracious creatures in this world. The rational creatures, since the fall,
have a prevailing principle of corruption. Let the obedience of other creatures
incite us more to imitate them, and shame our remissness in not acknow-
ledging the dominion of God, in the just way he prescribes us to walk in.
;.. Well then, let us not pretend to own God as our Lord, and yet act the
part of rebels. Let us give him the reverence, and pay him that obedience,
which of right belongs to so great a King. Whatsoever he speaks as a true
God ought to be beheved, whatsoever he orders as a sovereign God ought
to be obeyed. Let not God have less than man, nor man have more than
God. It is a common principle, writ upon the reason of all men, that respect
and observance is due to the majesty of a man, much more to the majesty of
God as a lawgiver.

As this doctrine presents us motives, so it directs us to the manner and
kind of our obedience to God.

1. It must be with a respect to his authority. As the veracity of God is
the formal object of faith, and the reason why we believe the things he hath
revealed, so the authority of God is the formal object of our obedience, or
the reason why we observe the things he hath commanded. There must be a
respect to his will as the rule, as well as to his glory as the end. It is not
formally obedience that is not done with a regard to the order of God, though
it may be materially obedience, as it answers the matter of the precept. As
when men will abstain from excess and rioting, because it is ruinous to their
health, not because it is forbidden by the great Lawgiver, this is to pay a
respect to our own conveniency and interest, not a conscientious observance
to God ; a regard to our health, not to our sovereign ; a kindness to our-
selves, not a justice due to the rights of God. There must not only be a
consideration of the matter of the precept as convenient, but a consideration
of the authority of the lawgiver as obligatory. Thus saith the Lord, ushers
in every order of his, directing our eye to the authority enacting it. Jero-
boam did God's will of prophecy in taking the kingdom of Israel, and the
devils may be subservient in God's will or providence, but neither of them
are put upon the account of obedience, because not done intentionally with

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. .;495

any conscience of the sovereignty of God. God will have this owned by a
regular respect to it ; so much he insists upon the honour of it, that the
sacrifice of Christ, God-man, was most agreeable to him, not only as it was
great and admirable in itself, but also for that ravishing obedience to his
will, which was the life and glory of his sacrifice, whereby the justice of God
was not only onmed in the offering, but the sovereignty of God owned in the
obedience ; Phil, ii. 8, ' He became obedient unto death ; wherefore God
highly exalted him.'

2. It must be the best and most exact obedience. The most sovereign
authority calls for the exactest and lowest observance, the highest Lord for
the deepest homage : being he is a great king, he must have the best in our
flock, Mai. i. Obedience is due to God, as king, and the choicest obedience
is due to him, as he is the most excellent king. The more majestic and
noble any man is, the more careful we are in our manner of service to him.
We are bound to. obey God, not only under the title of a Lord in regard of
jurisdiction and political subjection, but under the title of a true Lord and
Master in regard of propriety. Since we are not only his subjects but servants,
the exactest obedience is due to God jure servitutis : Luke xvii. 10, ' When
you have done all, say you are unprofitable servants,' because we can do
nothing which' we owe not to God.

3. Sincere and inward obedience. As it is a part of his sovereignty to
prescribe laws, not only to man in his outward state, but to his conscience,
so it is a part of our subjection to receive his laws into our will and heart.
The authority of his laws exceeds human laws in the extent and riches of
them, and our acknowledgment of his sovereignty cannot be right but by
subjecting the faculties of our soul to the Lawgiver of our souls ; we else
acknowledge his authority to be as limited as the empire of man. When
his will not only sways the outward action but the inward motion, it is a
giving him the honour of his high throne above the throne of mortals. The
right of God ought to be preserv^.d undamaged in affection, as well as action.

4. It must be sole obedience. We are ordered to serve him only : Mat.
iv. 10, ' Him only shalt thou serve.' As the only supreme Loi'd, as being the
highest Sovereign, it is fit he should have the highest obedience before all
earthly sovereigns ; and as being unparalleled by any among all the nations,
so none must have an obedience equal to him. When God commands, if
the highest power on earth countermands it, the precept of God must bepre-
fen-ed before the countermand of the creature : Acts iv. 18, 19, 'Whether
it be right, in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God,
judge ye.' We must never give place to the authority of all the mouarchs
in the world, to the prejudice of that obedience we owe to the supreme mon-
arch of heaven and earth. This would be to place the throne of God at
the footstool of man, and debase him below the rank of a creature. Loyalty
to man can never recompense for the mischief accruing from disloyalty to God.
All the obedience we are to give to man, is to be paid in obedience to God,
and with an eye to his precept ; therefore, what servants do for their masters
they must do ' as to the Lord,' Col. iii. 23, and children are to ' obey their
parents in the Lord,' Eph. vi. 1. The authority of God is to be eyed in
all the services payable to man. Proper and true obedience hath God solely
for its principal and primary object ; all obedience to man that interferes
with that, and would justle out obedience to God, is to be refused. What
obedience is due to man, is but rendered as a part of obedience to God, and
a stooping of his authority.

5. It must be universal obedience. The laws of man are not to be
universally obeyed ; some may be oppressive and unjust. No man hath

496 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

authority to make an unjust law, and no subject is bound to obey an unright-
eous law ; but God being a righteous sovereign, there is not one of his laws
but doth necessarily oblige us to obedience. Whatsoever this supreme power
declares to be his will, it must be our care to observe. Man, being his
creature, is bound to be subject to whatsoever laws he doth impose, to the
meanest as well as to the greatest, they having equally a stamp of divine
authority upon them. We are not to pick and choose among his precepts ;
this is to pare away part of his authority, and render him a half sovereign.

It must be universal in all places. An Englishman in Spain is bound to
obey the laws of that country wherein he resides, and so not responsible
there for the breach of the laws of his native country. In the same condi-
tion is a Spaniard in England. But the laws of Grod are to be obeyed in
every part of the world ; wheresoever divine providence doth cast us, it casts
us not out of the places where he commands, nor out of the compass of his
own empire. He is Lord of the world, and his laws oblige in every part of
the world ; they were ordered for a world, and not for a particular climate
and territory.

6. It must be indisputable* obedience. All authority requires readiness
in the subject ; the centurion had it from his soldiers : they went when he
ordered them, and came when he beckoned to them, Mat. viii. 9. It is more
fit God should have the same promptness from his subjects. We are to
obey his orders, though our purblind understandings may not apprehend the
reason of every one of them. It is without dispute that he is sovereign, and
therefore it is without dispute that we are bound to obey him, without con-
trolling^ his conduct. A master will not bear it from his slave, why should
God from his creature ? Though God admits his creatures sometimes to
treat with him about the equality of his justice, and also about the reason
of some commands, yet sometimes he gives no other reason but his own
sovereignty, ' Thus saith the Lord,' to correct the malapertness of men, and
exact from them an entire obedience to this unlimited and absolute autho-
rity. When Abraham was commanded to offer Isaac, God acquaints him not
with the reason of his demand till after. Gen. xxii. 2, 12 ; nor did Abraham
enter any demur to the order, or expostulate with God, either from his own
natural afi'ection to Isaac, the hardness of the command, it being as it were
a ripping up his own bowels, nor the quickness of it after he had been a
child of the promise, and a divine donation above the course of nature. Nor
did Paul confer with flesh and blood, and study arguments from nature and
interest to oppose the divine command, when he was sent upon his aposto-
lical employment. Gal. i. 16. The more indisputable his right is to com-
mand, the stronger is our obligation to obey, without quenching the reason
of his orders.

7. It must be a joyful obedience. Men are commonly more cheerful in
their obedience to a great prince, than to a mean peasant, because the quality
of the master renders the service more honourable. It is a discredit to a
prince's government when his subjects obey him with discontent and dejected-
ness, as though he were a hard master, and his laws tyrannical and unright-
eous. When we pay obedience but with a dull and feeble pace, and a sour
and sad temper, we blemish our great sovereign, imply his commands to be
grievous, void of that peace and pleasure he proclaims to be in them, that
he deserves no respect from us, if we obey him because we must, and not
because we will. Involuntary obedience deserves not the title ; it is rather
submission than obedience, an act of the body, not of the mind ; a mite
of obedience with cheerfulness is better than a talent without it. In the

* That is ' undisputing.' — Ed.

Ps. cm. 19.] god's dominion. 497

little Paul did, he comforts himself in this, that * with the mind he served the
law of God,' Rom. vii. 25. ' The testimonies of God were David's delight,'
Ps. cxix. 24. Our understandings must take pleasure in knowing him, our
wills delightfully embrace him, and our actions be cheerfully squared to him.
This credits the sovereignty of God in the world, makes others believe him to
be a gracious Lord, and move them to have some veneration for his authority.

8. It must be perpetual obedience. As man is a subject as soon as he is
a creature, so he is a subject as long as he is a creature. God's sovereignty
is of perpetual duration, as long as he is God ; man's obedience must be per-
petual while he is man. God cannot part with his sovereignty, and a crea-
ture cannot be exempted from subjection ; we must not only serve him, but
cleave to him, Deut. xiii. 4. Obedience is continued in heaven, his thi-one
is established in heaven ; it must be bowed to in heaven, as well as in earth.
The angels continually fulfil his pleasure.

7. Exhortation. Patience is a duty flowing from this doctrine. In all
strokes upon ourselves, or thick showers upon the church, the Lord reigns,
is a consideration to prevent muttering against him, and makes us quietly
wait to see what the issue of his divine pleasure will be. It is too great an
insolence againsty the divine Majesty to censure what he acts, or quarrel
with him for what he inflicts. Proud clay doth very unbecomingly swell
against an infinite superior. If God be our sovereign, we ought to subscribe
to his afflicting will without debates, as well as to his liberal will with afiec-
tionate applauses. We should be as full of patience under his sharper, as of
praise under his more grateful, dispensations, and be without reluctancy
against his penal, as well as his preceptive, pleasure. It is God's part to in-
flict, and the creature's part to submit.

This doctrine affords us motives, and shews us the nature of patience.

Motives to it.

1. God being sovereign, hath an absolute right to dispose of all things.
His title to our persons and possessions is upon this account stronger than
our own can be. We have as much reason to be angry with ourselves
when we assert our worldly right against others, as to be angry with God
for asserting the right of his dominion over us. Why should we enter a
charge against him, because he had not tempered us so strong in our bodies,
drawn us with as fail* colours, embellished our spirits with as lich gifts as
others ? Is he not the Sovereign of his own goods, to impart what, and in
what measure, he pleaseth ? Would you be content your servant should
check your pleasure in dispensing your own favours ? It is an unreasonable
thing not to leave God to the exercise of his own dominion. Though Job
were a pattern of patience, yet he had deep tinctures of impatience, he often
complains of God's usage of him as too hard, and stands much upon his own
integrity ; but when God comes in the latter chapters of that book to justify
his carriage towards him, he chargeth him not as a criminal, but considers
him only as his vassal. He might have found flaws enough in Job's car-
riage, and corruption enough in Job's nature, to clear the equity of his pro-
ceeding as a Judge, but he useth no other medium to convince him, but the
greatness of his majesty, the unlimitedness of his sovereignty, which so appals
the good man, that he puts his finger on his mouth, and stands mute with a
self-abhorrency before him as a sovereign, rather than as a judge. When
he doth pinch us, and deprive us of what we most aff'ect, his right to do it
should silence our lips, and calm our hearts from any boisterous uproars
against him.

2. The property of all still remains in God, since he is sovereign. He
did not divest himself of the property when he granted us the use. The

498 chaenock's works. [Ps. CIII. 19.

earth is bis, not ours ; the fulness of the earth is his, it is not ours ; the fulness
any of us have, as well as the fulness others have. After he had given the
Israelites corn, wine, and oil, he calls them all his, and emphatically adds
my to every one of them, Hosea ii. 9. His right is universal over every
mite we have, and perpetual too. He may therefore take from us what he
please. He did but deposit in our hands for a while the benefits we enjoy,
either children, friends, estate, or lives ; he did not make a total conveyance
of them, and alienate his own property when he put them into our hands ;
we can shew no patent for them, wherein the full right is passed over to us, to
hold them against his will and pleasure, and implead him if he offer to reassume
them. He resei-ved a power to dispossess us upon a forfeiture, as he is the
lord and governor. Did any of us yet answer the condition of his grant ?
It was his indulgence to allow them so long. There is reason to submit to
him, when he reassumes what he lent to us, and rather to thank him that he
lent it so long, and did not seize upon it sooner.

3. Other things have more reason to complain of our sovereignty over
them, than we of God's exercise of his sovereignty over us. Do we not
exercise an authority over our beasts, as to strike them when we please, and
merely for our pleasure, and think we merit no reproof for it, because they
are our own, and of a nature inferior to ours ? And shall not God, who is
absolute, do as much with us, who are more below him than the meanest
creatures are below us ? They are creatures as well as we, and we no
more creatures than they ; they were framed by omnipotence as well as we ;
there is no more difference between them and us in the notion of creatures.
As there is no difference between the greatest monarch on earth, and the
meanest beggar on the dunghill, in the notion of a man, — the beggar is a man
as well as the monarch, and as much a man, — the difference consists in the
special endowments we have above them by the bounty of their and our
common Creator. We are less, if compared with God, than the worst,
meanest, most sordid creature can be, if compared with us. Hath not a
bird or a hare (if they had a capacity) more reason to complain of men's
persecuting them by their hawks and their dogs ? But would their complaints
appear reasonable, since both were made for the use of man, and man doth
but use the nature of the one to attain a benefit by the other ? Have we
any reason to complain of God, if he lets loose other creatures, the devour-
ing hounds of the world, to bite and afflict us? We must not open our hps
against him, nor let our heart swell against his scourge, since both they and
we were made for his use, as well as other creatures for ours. This is a
reason to stifle all complaints against God, but not to make us careless of
preventing afflictions, or emerging out of them by all just ways. The hare
hath a nature to shift for itself by its winding and turning, and the bird by
its flight; and neither of them could be blamed, if they were able, should the
one scratch out the eyes of the hounds, and the other sacrifice the hawk to
its own fury.

4. It is a folly not to submit to him. Why should we strive against him,
since he is an unaccountable Sovereign, and ' gives no account of any of his
matters ' ? Job xxsiii. 13, Who can disannul the judgment God gives ?
There is no appeal from the supreme court ; a higher court can repeal or
null the sentence of an inferior court, but the sentence of the highest stands
irreversible, but by itself and its own authority. It is better to lower our
sails than to grapple with one that can shoot us under water ; to submit to
that sovereign whom we cannot subdue.

^ It shews us the true nature of patience in regard of God. It is a sub-

Ps. cm. 19.] god's domikion. 499

mission to God's sovereignty. As the fonnal object of obedience is the
authority of God enacting the law, so the formal object of patience is the
authority of God inflicting the punishment. As his right of commanding is
to be eyed in the one, so his right of punishing is to be considered in the
other. This was Eli's condition, when he had received a message, that
might put flesh and blood into a mutiny, the rending the priesthood from
his family, and the ruin of his house ; yet this consideration. It is the Lord,
calms him into submission, and a willing compliance with the divine plea-
sure : 1 Sam. iii. 18, ' It is the Lord, let him do what seems good in his
sight.' Job was of the same strain : Job i. 21, ' The Lord gives, and the
Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.' He considers
God as a sovereign who was not to be reproached, or have anything uncomely
uttered of him for what he had done. To be patient, because we cannot avoid
it or resist it, is a violent, not a loyal patience ; but to submit because it
is the will of God to inflict, to be silent because the sovereignty of God
doth order it, is a patience of a true complexion. The other kind of patience
is no other than that of an enemy, that will free himself as soon as he can,
and by any way, though never so violent, that offers itself. This sort of
patience is that of a subject acknowledging the supreme authority over him,
and that he ought to be ordered by the will, and to the glory of God, more
than by his own will, and for his own ease. ' I was dumb, I opened not
my mouth,' Ps. xxxix. 9, not because I could not help it, but ' because thou
didst it,' thou who art my sovereign Lord. The greatness of God claims an
awful and inviolable respect from his creatures, in what way soever he doth
dispose of them; this is due to him. Since his kingdom ruleth over all, his
kingdom should be acknowledged by all, and his royal authority submitted
to it in all that he doth.

A DISCOURSE UPON GOD'S PATIENCE.

The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the
ivicked; the Lord hath his ivay in the ivhirlwind and in the storm, and the
clouds are the dust of his feet. — Nahum I. 3.

Thb subject of this prophecy is God's sentence against Nineveh, the head
and metropolis of the Assyrian empire, — a city famous for its strength and
thickness of its walls, and the multitude of its towers for defence against an
enemy. The forces of this empire did God use as a scourge against the
Israelites, and by their hands ruined Samaria, the chief city of the ten
tribes, and transplanted them as captives into another country, 2 Kings
xvii. 5, 6, about six years after Hezekiah came to the crown of Judah,
2 Kings xviii. compared with chap. xvii. ver. 6. In whose time, or (as
some think) later, Nahum uttered this prophecy. The name Nahum signi-
fies comforter; though the matter of his prophecy be dreadful to Nineveh, it
was comfortable to the people of God. For a promise is made, ver. 7, ' The
Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble ; and he knoweth them that
trust in him ;' and an encouragement to Judah to keep their solemn feasts,
ver. 15, and also in chap. ii. 3, with a declaration of the misery of Nineveh,
and the destruction of it.
Observe,

1. In all the fears of God's people, God will have a comforter for them.
Judah might well be dejected with the calamity of their brethren, not know-
ing but it might be their own turn shortly after. They knew not where the
ambition of the Assyrian would stop, but God, by his prophets, calms their
fears of their furious neighbour, by predicting to them the ruin of their
feared adversary.

2. The destruction of the church's enemies is the comfort of the church.
By that God is glorified in his justice, and the church secured in its worship.

3. The victories of persecutors secure them not from being the triumphs
of others. The Assyrians, that conquered and captived Israel, were them-
selves to be conquered and captived by the Medes. The whole oppressing
empire is threatened with destruction in the ruin of their chief city ; accord-
ingly it was accomplished, and the empire extinguished by a greater power.
God burns the rod when it hath done the work he appointed it for ; and the
wisp of straw wherewith the vessels are scoured is flung into the fire or upon
the dunghill.

Nahuji I. 3.] god's patience. 501

Nahum begins his prophecy majestically, with a description of the wrath
and fury of God : ver. 2, ' God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth ; the
Lord revengeth, and is furious ; the Lord will take vengeance on his adver-
saries, and reserveth wrath for his enemies.' And therefore the whole of it
is called, ver. 1, ' The burden of Nineveh,' as those prophecies are which
are composed of threatenings of judgments, which lie as a mighty weight
upon the heads and backs of sinners.

God is jealous. Jealous of his glory and worship, and jealous for his
people and their security. He cannot long bear the oppressions of his
j)eopIe, and the boast of his enemies. He is jealous for himself, and is
jealous for you of Judah who retain his worship. He is not forgetful of
those that remember him, nor of the danger of those that are desirous to
maintain his honour in the world. Li this first expression, the prophet
uses the covenant name, God; the covenant runs, ' I am your God,' or 'the
Lord your God ; ' mostly God without Lord, never Lord without God.
And therefore his jealousy here is meant of the care of his people, and the
relation that his actions against his enemies have to his servants. He is a
lover of his own, and a revenger on his enemies.

The Lord revengeth, and is furious. He now describes God by a name of
sovereignty and power, when he describes him in his wrath and fury, ' and is
furious.' Heb., HDn b)22, Lord of hot anger. God wiU vindicate his own
glory, and have his right on his enemies in a way of punishment, if they
will not give it him in a way of obedience. It is three times repeated, to
shew the certainty of the judgment, and the name of Lord added to every
one, to intimate the power wherewith the judgment should be executed.* It
is not a fatherly correction of children in a way of mercy, but an offended
sovereign's destruction of his enemies in a way of vengeance. There is an
anger of God with his own people, which hath more of mercy than wrath ;
in this his rod is guided by his bowels. There is a fury of God against his
enemies where there is sole wrath without any tincture of mercy, when his
sword is all edge, without any balsam-drops upon it ; such a fury as David
deprecates : Ps. vi. 1, ' 0 Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, nor chasten
me in thy sore displeasure ; ' with a fury untempered with grace, and insup-
portable wrath.

He reserves wrath for his enemies. He lays it up in his treasury, to be
brought out and expended in a due season. Wrath is supplied by our trans-
lators, and is not in the Hebrew. He reserves what ? That which is too
sharp to be expressed, too great to be conceived. A vengeance it is. And
Nin IDIJ"), he reserves it. He that hath an infinite wrath, he reserves it,
that hath a strength and power to execute it.

Yer. 3. The Lord is slow to anger : Heb. D^SN l"li<, of broad nostrils.
The auger of God is expressed by this word, which signifies nostrils. As
Job ix. 13, ' If God will not withdraw his anger ;' Heb., < his nostril.' And
the anger whereby the wicked are consumed is called the breath of [his]
nostrils. Job iv. 9 ; and when he is angry, smoke and fire are said to go out
of his nostrils, 2 Sam. ii. 9 ; and in the 74th Psalm, ver. 1, 'Why doth thy
anger smoke ? ' Heb. ' Why do thy nostrils smoke ? ' So the rage of a horse,
when he is provoked in battle, is called ' the glory of his nostrils,' Job
xxxix. 20. He breathes quick fumes, and neighs with fury.

And slowness to anger is here expressed by the phrase of long or wide

nostrils. Because in a vehement anger, the blood boiling about the heart

exhales men's spirits, which fume up, and break out in dilated nostrils ;

but where the passages are straiter, the spirits have not so quick a vent, and

* Ribera in loc.

502 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

therefore raise more motions within ; or because the wider the nostrils are,
the more cool air is drawn in to temper the heat of the heart where the
angry spirits are gathered, and so the passion is allayed and sooner calmed.
God speaks of himself in Scripture often after the rate of men. Jeremiah
prays, Jer. xv. 15, that God would not ' take him away in his long-suffering: '
Heb., ' in the length of his nostrils ; ' i. e. be not slow and backward in thy
anger against my persecutors, as to give them time and opportunity to
destroy me. The nostrils, as well as other members of a human body, are
ascribed to God. He is slow to anger ; he hath anger in his nature, but is
not always in the execution of it.

And great in power. This may refer to his patience as the cause of it, or
as a bar to the abuse of it.

1. He is slow to anger, and great in po%ver ; i. e. his power moderates his
anger ; he is not so impotent as to be at the command of his passions, as
men are. He can restrain his anger under just provocations to exercise it.
His power over himself is the cause of his slowness to wrath. As, Num.
xiv. 17, ' Let the power of my Lord be great,' saith Moses, when he pleads
for the Israelites' pardon. Men that are great in the world are quick in
passions, and are not so ready to forgive an injury, or bear with an offender,
as one of a meaner rank. It is a want of a power over a man's self that
makes him do unbecoming things upon a provocation. A prince that can
bridle his passions is a king over himself as well as over his subjects. God
is slow to anger, because great in power. He hath no less power over him-
self than over his creatures. He can sustain great injuries without an
immediate and quick revenge. He hath a power of patience, as well as a
power of justice.

2. Or thus, he is slow to anger, and great in power. He is slow to anger,
but not for want of power to revenge himself; his power is as great to
punish, as his patience to spare. It seems thus, that slowness to anger is
brought in as an objection against the revenge proclaimed. What do you
tell us of vengeance, vengeance, nothing but such repetitions of vengeance,
as though we were ignorant that God is slow to anger ? It is true, saith the
prophet, I acknowledge it as much as you, that God is slow to anger, but
withal great in power. His anger certainty succeeds his abused patience ;
he will not always bridle in his wrath, but one time or other let it march out
in fury against his adversaries. The Assyrians who had captived the ten
tribes, and been victorious a little against the Jews, might think that the
God of Israel had been conquered by their gods, as well as the people pro-
fessing him had been subdued by their arms ; that God had lost all his
power, and the Jews might argue from God's patience to his enemies, against
the credit of the prophet's denouncing revenge. The prophet answers to the
terror of the one, and the comfort of the other, that this indulgence to his
enemies, and not accounting with them for their crimes, proceeded from the
greatness of his patience, and not from any debility in his power. As it
refers to the Assyrian, it may be rendered thus : You Ninevites, upon your
repentance after Jonah's thunderings of judgments, are witnesses of the slow-
ness of God to anger, and had your punishments deferred ; but falling to
your old sins, you shall find a real punishment, and that he hath as much
power to execute his ancient threatenings, as he had then compassion to
recall them. His patience to you, then, was not for want of power to ruin
you, but was the effect of his goodness toward you. As it refers to the
Jews, it may be thus paraphrased : Do not despise this threatening against
your enemies, because of the greatness of their might, the seeming stability
of their empire, and the terror they possess all the nations with round about

Nahum I. 3. J god's patience. 503

them. It may be long before it comes ; but assure yourselves, the threat-
ening I denounce shall certainly be executed, though he hath patience to
endure them a hundred thirty-five years (for so long it was before Nineveh
was destroyed after this threatening, as Ribera* in loc. computes from the
years of the reigns of the kings of Judah), yet he hath also power to verify
his word, and accomplish his will ; assure yourselves, he will not at all acquit
the wicked.

He uill not acquit the wicked. He will not always account the criminal
an innocent, as he seems to do by a present sparing of them, and dealing
with them as if they were destitute of any provoking carriage towards him,
and he void of any resentment of it. He will not acquit the wicked. How
is this ; who then can be saved ? Is there no place for remission ? He will
not acquit the wicked, i. e. he will not acquit obstinate sinners. As he hath
patience for the wicked, so he hath mercy for the penitent. The wicked are
the subjects of his long-suffering, but not of his acquitting, grace. He doth
not presently punish their sins, because he is slow to anger ; but without
their repentance he will not blot out their sins, because he is righteous in
judgment. If God should acquit them without repentance for their crimes,
he must himself repent of his own law, and righteous sanction of it.

He will not acquit, i. e. he will not go back from the thing he hath spoken,
and forbear, at long run, the punishment he hath threatened.

The Lord hath his way in the rchirlwind. The way of God signifies some-
times the law of God, sometimes the providential operations of God : Ezek.
xviii. 25, ' Is not my way equal ?' It seems there to take in both.

And in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. The prophet
describes here the fight of God with the Assyrians, as if he rushed upon
them with a mighty noise of an army, raising the dust with the feet of their
horses, and motion of their chariots.f Symbolically, it signifies the mul-
titude of the Chaldean and Median forces, invading, besieging, and storming
the city.

It signifies,

1. The rule of providence. The way of God is in every motion of the
creature. He rules all things, whirlwind, storms, clouds ; his way is in all
their walks, in the whirlings and blusterings of the one, in the raising and
dissolving the other. He blows up the winds, and compacts the clouds, to
make them serviceable to his design.

2. The management of wars by God. His way is in the storm. As he
was the captain of the Assyrians against Samaria, so he will be the captain
of the Medes against Nineveh. As Israel was not so much wasted by the
Assyrians, as by the Lord, who levied and armed their forces, so Nineveh
shall be subverted rather by God than by the arms of the Medes. Their
force is described not to be so much from human power as divine ; God is
president in all the commotions of the world ; his way is in every whirlwind.

3. The easiness of executing the judgment. He is of so great power that
he can excite tempests in the air, and overthrow them with the clouds, which
are the dust of his feet. He can blind his enemies, and avenge himself on
them ; he is Lord of clouds, and can fill their womb with hail, lightnings and
thunders, to burst out upon those he kindles his anger against. He is of so
great force, that he needs not use the strength of his arm, but the dust of his
feet, to eflect his destroying purpose.

4. The suddenness of the judgment. Whirlwinds come suddenly, without
any harbingers to give notice of their approach ; clouds are swift in their
motion : Isa. Ix. 8, ' Who are those that fiy as a cloud,' i. e. with a mighty

* Page 359, col. 1. t Tirinus in loc.

504 chaknock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

nimbleness ? What God doth, he shall do on the sudden, come upon them
before they are aware, be too quick for them in his motion to overrun and
overreach them. The winds are described with wings, in regard of the quick-
ness of their motion.

5. The tenor of judgments. The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind,
i. e. in great displeasure. The anger of the Lord is often compared to a
storm : he shall bring clouds of judgments upon them, many and thick, as
terrible as when a day is turned into night, by the mustering of the darkest
clouds that interpose between the sun and the earth. ' Clouds and darkness
are round about him ; and a fire goes before him, when he burns up his ene-
mies,' Ps. xcvii. 2, 3. The judgments shall have terror without mercy, as
clouds obscure the light, and are dark masks before the face and glory of
the sun, and cut off its refreshing beams from the earth. Clouds note mul-
titude and obscurity ; God could crush them without a whirlwind, beat them
to powder with one touch ; but he will bring his judgments in the most sur-
prising and amazing manner to flesh and blood, so that all their glory shall
be changed into nothing but terror, by the noise of the bellowing winds, and
the clouds like ink blacking the heavens.

6. The confusion of the olieuders upon God's proceeding. A whirlwind
is not only a boisterous wind, that hurls and rolls everything out of his place,
but by its circular motion, by its winding to all points of the compass, it
confounds things, and jumbles them together. It keeps not one point, but
by a circumgyration toucheth upon all. Clouds like dust shall be blown in
their face, and gum up their eyes. They shall be in a posture of confusion,
not know what counsels to take, what motions to resolve upon. Let them
look to every point of heaven and earth, they shall meet with a whirlwind
to confound them, and cloudy dust to blind them.

7. The irresistibleness of their judgment. Winds have more than a giant-
like force, a torrent of compacted air, that with an invincible wilfulness
bears all before it, displaceth the firmest trees, and levels the tallest towers,
and pulls up bodies from their natural place. Clouds also are over our
heads, and above our reach. When God places them upon his people for
defence, they are an invincible security, Isa. iv. 5 ; and when he moves them
as a chariot against a peoj^le, they end in an irresistible destruction. Thus
the ruin of the wicked is described : Prov. x. 25, * As the whirlwind passes,
so is the wicked no more.' It blows them down, sweeps them away, they
irrecoverably fall before the force of it. ' What heart can endure, and what
hands can be strong, in the days wherein God doth deal with them' ? Ezek.
xxii. 14. Thus is the judgment against Nineveh described : God hath his
way in the whirlwind to thunder down their strongest walls, which were so
thick, that chariots could march abreast upon them, and batter down their
mighty towers, which that city had in multitudes upon their walls.

They are the first words I intend to insist upon, to treat of the patience
of God, described in those words, ' The Lord is slow to anger.'

Doct. Slowness to anger, or admirable patience, is the property of the
divine nature. As patience signifies suflering, so it is not in God. The
divine nature is impassible, incapable of any impair ; it cannot be touched
by the violences of men, nor the essential glory of it be diminished by the
injuries of men ; but as it signifies a willingness to defer, and an unwilling-
ness to pour forth his wrath upon sinful creatures, he moderates his pro-
voked justice, and forbears to revenge the injuries he daily meets with in the
world. He suffers no grief by men's wronging him, but he restrains his arm
from punishing them according to their merits. And thus there is patience
in every cross a man meets with in the world, because, though it be a punish-

Nahum I. 3.] god's patiexce. 505

ment, it is less than is merited by the unrighteous rebel, and less than may
be inflicted by a righteous and powerful God.

This patience is seen in his providential works in the world : ' He suffered
the nations to walk in their own way;' and the witness of his providence to
them was his ' giving them rain, and fruitful seasons, filling their heart with
food and gladness,' Acts xvi. 17. The heathens took notice of it, and sig-
nified it by feigning their god Saturn to be bound a whole year in a soft
cord, a cord of wool ; and expressed it by this proverb, ' The mills of the
gods grind slowly;' i. e. God doth not use men with that severity that they
deserve, the mills being usually turned by criminals condemned to that work.
This in Scripture is frequently expressed by a slowness to anger, Ps. ciii. 8;
sometimes by long- suffering, which is a patience with duration, Ps. cxlv. 8 ;
and, Joel ii. 13, he is slow to anger, he takes not the first occasions of a
provocation; he is long-suffering, Piom. ix 22; and, Ps. Ixxxvi. 15, he for-
bears punishment upon many occasions offered him.* It is long before he
consents to give fire to his wrath, and shoot out his thunderbolts. Sin hath
a loud cry, but God seems to stop his ears, not to hear the clamour it raises
and the charge it presents. He keeps his sword a long time in the sheath.
One calls the patience of God the sheath of his sword,f upon those words,
Ezek. xxi. 3, ' I will draw forth my sword out of his sheath.' This is one
remarkable letter in the name of God, he himself proclaims it : Exod.
xxxiv. 6, * The Lord, the Lord God, merciful, gracious, and long-suffering.'
And Moses pleads it in the behalf of the people, Num. xiv. 18, where he
placeth it in the first rank: ' The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy.'
It is the fii'st spark of mercy, and ushers it to its exercises in the world.
In the Lord's proclamation it is put in the middle, linking mercy and truth
together. Mercy could have no room to act if patience did not prepare the
way, and his truth and goodness in his promise of the Redeemer would not
have been manifest to the world if he had shot his arrows as soon as men
committed their sins and deserved his punishment. This perfection is ex-
pressed by other phrases, as keeping silence : Ps. 1. 21, ' These things hasfc
thou done, and I kept silence ;' '^p;\U t^TV Pi^'W ^'?^<, it signifies to behave
one's self as a deaf or dumb man. I did not fly in thy face, as some do
with a gi-eat noise upon a light provocation, as if their life, honour, estates
were at the stake. I did not presently call thee to the bar, and pronounce
judicial sentence upon thee according to the law, but demeaned myself as if
I had been ignorant of thy crimes, and had not been invested with the power
of judging thee for them : C'liald. ' I waited for thy conversion.' God's
patience is the silence of his justice, and the first whisper of his mercy.

It is also expressed by 'not laying folly' to men. Job xxiv. 12. Men
groan under the oppressions of others, ' yet God lays not folly to them,' i.e.
to the oppressors ; God suffers them to go on with impunity. He doth not
deliver his people, because he would try them; and takes not revenge upon
the unrighteous, because in patience he doth bear wdth them. Patience is
the life of his providence in this world. He chargeth not men with their
crimes here, but reserves them upon impenitency for another trial. This
attribute is so great a one, that it is signally called by the name of perfec-
tion. Mat. V. 45, 48, He had been speaking of divine goodness and patience
to evil men, and he concludes, ' Be you perfect,' &c. ; implying it to be an
amazing perfection in the divine nature, and worthy of imitation.

In the prosecution of this,

• Rhofligi. 1. vi. c. 14.

I A7,/.ov hi on ky/ii^ibittv ttiv Ti/xoj^lav xa/.iT, xoXiov 6s, rovrian ttiv ^r,x,rjv roZ
iyyj:i^tbio\j, /J,ay.pc9u/J,iuv ovofid'C^n . — Theodoret in loc.

'^06 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

I. Let us consider the nature of this patience.

II. Wherein it is manifested.

III. Why God doth exercise so much patience.

IV. The use.

I. The nature of this patience.

1. It is part of the divine goodness and mercy, yet differs from both. God
being the greatest goodness, hath the greatest mildness ; mildness is always
the companion of true goodness, and the greater the goodness, the greater
the mildness. Who so holy as Christ, and who so meek ? God's slowness
to anger is a branch or slip from his mercy : Ps. cxlv. 8, ' The Lord is full
of compassion, slow to anger.' It differs from mercy in the formal con-
sideration of the object ; mercy respects the creature as miserable, patience
respects the creature as criminal ; mercy pities him in his misery, and
patience bears with the sin which engendered that misery, and is giving birth
to more.

Again, mercy is one end of patience, his long-suffering is partly to glorify
his grace ; so it was in Paul, 1 Tim. i. 16. As slowness to anger springs
from goodness, so it makes mercy the butt and mark of its operations : Isa.
XXX. 18, 'He waits that he may be gracious.' Goodness sets God upon the
exercise of patience, and patience sets many a sinner on running into the
arms of mercy. That mercy which makes God ready to embrace returning
sinners, makes him willing to bear with them in their sins, and wait their
return.

It differs also from goodness in regard of the object. The object of good-
ness is every creature, angels, men, all inferior creatures, to the lowest worm
that crawls upon the ground. The object of patience is primarily man, and
secondarily those creatures that respect men's support, conveuiency, and
delight ; but they are not the objects of patience as considered in themselves,
but in relation to man, for whose use they were created, and therefore God's
patience to them is properly his patience with man. The lower creatures
do not injure God, and therefore are not the objects of his patience but as
they are forfeited by man, and man deserves to be deprived of them. As
man in this regard falls under the patience of God, so do those creatures
which are designed for man's good. That patience which spares man, spares
other creatures for him, which w^ere all forfeited by man's sin, as well as his
own life, and are rather the testimonies of God's patience than the proper
objects of it. The object of God's goodness, then, is the whole creation; not
a devil in hell but, as a creature, is a mark of his goodness, but not of his
patience. There is a kind of sparing exercised to the devils, in deferring
their complete punishment, and hitherto keeping off" the day wherein their
final sentence is to be pronounced ; yet the Scripture never mentions this
by the name of slowness to anger or long-suffering. It can no more be
called patience, than a prince's keeping a malefactor in chains, and not pro-
nouncing a condemning sentence, or not executing a sentence already pro-
nounced, can be called a patience with him, when it is not out of kindness
to the offender, but for some reasons of state. God's sparing the devils
from their total punishment (which they have not yet, but are ' reserved in
chains under darkness' for it, Jude 6), is not in order to repentance, or
attended wdth any invitations from God, or hopes in them, and therefore
cannot come under the same title as God's sparing man. Where there is
no proposal of mercy, there is no exercise of patience. The fallen angels
had no mercy reserved for them, nor any sacrifice prepared for them : God
' spared not the angels,' 2 Peter ii. 4, • but delivered them into chains of

Nahum I. 3.J god's patience. 507

darkness, to be reserved unto judgment ;' i.e. he had no patience for them,
for patience is properly a temporary sparing a person, with a waiting for his
relenting, and a change of his injurious demeanour. The object of good-
ness is more extensive than that of patience. Nor do they both consider
the object under the same relation. Goodness respects things in a capacity
or in a state of creation, and brings them forth into creation, and nurseth
and supports them as creatures. Patience considers them already created,
and fallen short of the duty of creatures ; it considers them as sinners, or
in relation to sinners. Had not sin entered, patience had never been exer-
cised ; but goodness had been exercised had the creature stood firm in its
created state, without any transgression. Nay, creation could not have
been without goodness, because it was goodness to create ; but patience had
never been known without an object, which could not have been without an
injury. Where there is no wrong, no sufiering, nor like to be any, patience
hath no prospect of any operation. So then goodness respects persons as
creatures, patience as transgressors ; mercy eyes men as miserable and
obnoxious to punishment, patience considers men as sinful and provoking to
punishment.

2. Since it is a part of goodness and mercy, it is not an insensible patience.
What is the fruit of pure goodness, cannot be from a weakness of resentment;
he is 'slow to anger.' The prophet doth not say he is incapable of anger,
or cannot discern what is a real object of anger ; it implies that he doth con-
sider ever}' provocation, but he is not hasty to discharge his arrows upon the
oflenders; he sees all, while he bears with them; his omniscience excludes
any ignorance. He cannot but see every wrong, every aggravation in that
wrong, every step and motion from the beginning to the completing it ;
for he knows all our thoughts ; he sees the sin and the sinner at the same
time ; the sin with an eye of abhorrency, and the sinner with an eye of pity.
His eye is upon their iniquities, and his hatred edged against them, while
he stands with arms open, waiting a penitent return. When he publisheth his
patience in his keeping silence, he publisheth also his resolution to set sin
in order before their eyes : Ps. 1. 21, ' I will reprove thee, and set them in
order before thy eyes.' Think me not such a piece of phlegm, and so dull,
as not to resent your insolencies ; you shall see in my final charge, when I
come to judge, that not a wry look escaped my knowledge, that I had an eye
to behold, and a heart to loathe, every one of your transgressions. The
church was ready to think that God's slowness to deliver her, and his bear-
ing with her oppressors, was not from any patience in his nature, but a
drowsy carelessness, a senseless lethargy : Ps. xliv. 23, * Awake, why sleepest
thou, 0 Lord?' We must conclude him an inapprehensive God, before we
can conclude him an insensible God. As his delaying his promise is ' not
slackness ' to his people, 2 Peter iii. 9, so his deferring of punishment is not
from a stupidity under the affi'onts ofiered him.

3. Since it is a part of his mercy and goodness, it is not a constrained or
faint-hearted patience. It is not a slowness to anger, arising from a des-
pondency of his own power to revenge. He hath as much power to punish
as he hath to forbear punishment. He that created a world in six days, and
that by a word, wants not a strength to crush all mankind in one minute,
and with as much ease as a word imports, can give satisfaction to his justice
in the blood of the offender. Patience in man is many times interpreted,
and truly too, a cowardice, a feebleness of spirit, and a want of strength.
But it is not from the shortness of the divine arm that he cannot reach us,
nor from the feebleness of his hand that he cannot strike us. It is not
because he cannot level us with the dust, dash us in pieces like a potter's

508 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

vessel, or consume as a moth. He can make the mightiest to fall before
him, and lay the strongest at his feet the first moment of their crime. He
that did not want a powerful word to create a world, cannot want a powerful
word to dissolve the whole frame of it, and raze it out of being. It is not
therefore out of a distrust of his own power that he hath supported a sinful
world for so many ages, and patiently borne the blasphemies of some, the
neglects of others, and the ingratitude of all, without inflicting that severe
justice which righteously he might have done ; he wants no thunder to crush
the whole generation of men, nor waters to drown them, nor earth to swal-
low them up. How easy is it for him to single out this or that particular
person to be the object of his wrath, and not of his patience ! What he
hath done to one he may to another ; any signal judgment he hath sent upon
one is an evidence that he wants not power to inflict it upon all. Could he
not make the motes in the air to choke us at every breath, rain thunderbolts
instead of drops of water, fill the clouds with a consuming lightning, take off
the reverence and fear of man, which he hath imprinted upon the creature,
spirit our domestic beasts to be our executioners, unloose the tiles from the
house-top to brain us, or make the fall of a house to crush us ? It is but
taking out the pins, and giving a blast, and the work is done. And doth he
want a power to do any of those things ? It is not, then, a faint-hearted or
feeble patience that he exerciseth towards man.

4. Since it is not for want of power over the creature, it is from a fulness
of power over himself. This is in the text : ' The Lord is slow to anger,
and great in power ; ' it is a part of his dominion over himself, whereby he
can moderate and rule his own affections, according to the holiness of his
own will. As it is the efiect of his power, so it is an argument of his power ;
the greatness of the effect demonstrates the fulness and sufficiency of the
cause. The more feeble any man is in reason, the less command he hath
over his passions, and he is the more heady to revenge. Eevenge is a sign
of a childish mind ; the stronger any man is in reason, the more command he
hath over himself : Prov. xvi. 32, ' He that is slow to anger is better than
the mighty : and he that rules his own spirit, than he that takes a city.' He
that can restrain his anger is stronger than the Ca3sars and Alexanders of
the world, that have filled the earth with slain carcases, and ruined cities.
By the same reason God's slowness to anger is a greater argument of his
power than the creating a world, or the power of dissolving it by a word ; in
this he hath a dominion over creatures, in the other over himself. This is
the reason he will not return to destroy : because ' I am God, and not man,'
Hosea xi, 9. I am not so weak and impotent as man, that cannot restrain
his anger. This is a strength possessed only by a God, wherein a creature
is no more able to parallel him than in any other ; so that he may be said
to be the Lord of himself, as it is in the verse before the text, that he is
' the Lord of anger,' in the Hebrew, instead of ' furious,' as we translate it,
so he is the Lord of patience. The end why God is patient is to shew his
power : Rom. ix. 22, ' What if God-, willing to shew his wrath, and to make
his power known, endureth with much long-sufiering the vessels of wrath
fitted to destruction ? ' to shew his wrath upon sinners, and his power over
himself, in bearing such indignities, and forbearing punishment so long,
when men were vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, of whom there was no
hopes of amendment. Had he immediately broken in pieces those vessels,
his power had not so eminently appeared as it hath done, in tolerating them
so long, that had provoked him to take them off so often. There is indeed
the power of his anger, and there is the power of his patience, and his power
is more seen in his patience than in his wrath. It is no wonder that he

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 509

that is above all is able to crush all, but it is a wonder that he that is
provoked by all doth not, upon the first provocation, rid his hands of all.
This is the reason why he did bear such a weight of provocations from
vessels of wrath, prepared for ruin, that he might yvu^iffai to ovvutov
auTou, shew what he was able to do, the lordship and I'oyalty he had over
himself. The power of God is more manifest in his patience to a multitude
of sinners, than it could be in creating millions of worlds out of nothing ;
this was the h-omrov ai/roD, a power over himself.

5. This patience being a branch of mercy, the exercise of it is founded in
the death of Christ. Without the consideration of this, we can give no
account why divine patience should extend itself to us, and not to the fallen
angels. The threatening extends itself to us as well as to the fallen
angels. The threatening must necessarily have sunk man, as well as those
glorious creatures, had not Christ stepped in to our relief. Had not Christ
interposed to satisfy the justice of God, man upon his sin had been actually
bound over to punishment, as well as the fallen angels were upon theirs, and
been fettered in chains as strong as those spirits feel.* The reason why
man was not hurled into the same deplorable condition upon his sin, as they
were, is Christ's promise of taking our nature, and not theirs. Had God
designed Christ's taking their nature, the same patience had been exercised
towards them, and the same offers would have been made to them, as are
made to us. In regard of the fruits of his patience, Christ is said to buy
the wickedest apostates from him : 2 Peter ii. 1 ' Denying the Lord that
bought them ; ' such were bought by him as * bring upon themselves just
destruction, and whose damnation slumbers not,' ver. 3 ; he purchased the
continuance of their lives, and the stay of their execution, that oflers of grace
might be made to them. This patience must be either upon the account of the
law or the gospel, for there are no other rules whereby God governs the world;
a fruit of the law it was not, that spake nothing but curses after disobedience;
not a letter of mercy was writ upon that, and therefore nothing of patience.

Death and wrath was denounced, no slowness to anger intimated. It
must be therefore upon the account of the gospel, and a fruit of the covenant
of grace, whereof Christ was mediator. Besides, this perfection being God's
' waiting that he might be gracious,' Isa. xxx. 18, that which made way for
God's grace made way for his waiting to manifest it. God discovered not
his gi-ace but in Christ, and therefore discovered not his patience but in
Christ ; it is in him he met with the satisfaction of his justice, that he might
have a ground for the manifestation of his patience. And the sacrifices of
the law, wherein the life of a beast was accepted for the sin of a man, dis-
covered the ground of his forbearance of them to be the expectation of the
great sacrifice, whereby sin was to be completely expiated. Gen. viii. 21.
The publication of his patience to the end of the world is presently after the
sweet savour he found in Noah's sacrifice. The promised and designed com-
ing of Christ was the cause of that patience God exercised before in the
world ; and his gathering the elect together is the reason of his patience
since his death.

The naturalness of his veracity and holiness, and the strictness of his
justice, are no bars to the exercise of his patience.

(1.) His veracity. In those threatenings where the punishment is ex-
pressed, but not the time of infiicting it prefixed and determined in the
threatening, his veracity sufi'ers no damage by the delaying execution ; so it
be once done, though a long time after, the credit of his truth stands un-
shaken ; as when God promises a thing without fixing the time, he is at
* Testard. de Natur. et Grat, thes. 119.

510 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

liberty to pitch upon what time he pleases for the performance of it, without
staining his faithfulness to his word, by not giving the thing promised pre-
sently. Why should the deferring of justice upon an offender, be any more
against his veracity, than his delaying an answer to the petitions of a sup-
pliant ? But the difference will lie in the threatening : Gen. ii. 17, * In the
day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death.' The time was there
settled. In that day thou shalt die. Some refer day to eating, not to dying ;
and render the sentence thus, I do not prohibit thee the eating this fruit for
a day or two, but continually ; in whatsoever day thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt die ; but not understanding his dying that very day he should eat of
it, referring day to the extensiveness of the prohibition, as to time. But
to leave this as uncertain, it may be answered, that as in some threatenings
a condition is imphed, though not expressed, as in that positive denouncing
of the destruction of Nineveh, Jonah iii. 4, ' Yet forty days, and Nineveh
shall be destroyed,' the condition is implied, unless they humble themselves
and repent, for upon their repentance the sentence was deferred, so here,
' In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death,' or ' certainly die,'
unless there be a way found for the expiation of thy crime, and the righting
my honour. This condition, in regard of the event, may as well be asserted
to be implied in this threatening, as that of repentance was in the other. Or
rather, thou shalt die, thou shalt die spiritually, thou shalt lose that image
of mine in thy nature, that righteousness which is as much the life of thy
soul, as thy soul is the life of thy body ; that righteousness whereby thou
art enabled to live to me, and thy own happiness. What the soul is to the
body, a quickening soul, that the image of God is to the soul, a quickening
image. Or thou shalt die the death, or certainly die, thou shalt be liable to
death. And so it is to be understood, not of an actual death of the body,
but the merit of death, and the necessity of death ;* thou wilt be obnoxious
to death, which will be avoided, if thou dost forbear to eat of the forbidden
fruit ; thou shalt be a guilty person, and so under a sentence of death, that
I may when I please inflict it on thee. Death did come upon Adam that
day, because his nature was vitiated. He was then also under an expecta-
tion of death, he was obnoxious to it, though that day it was not poured out
upon him in the full bitterness and gall of it. As when the apostle saith,
Kom. viii. 10, ' The body is dead because of sin,' he speaks to the living,
and yet tells them, the body was dead because of sin, he means no more
than that it was under a sentence, and so a necessity of dying, though not
actually dead ; so thou shalt be under the sentence of death that day, as
certainly as if that day thou shouldst sink into the dust. And as by his
patience towards man, not sending forth death upon him in all the bitter in-
gredients of it, his justice afterwards was more eminent upon man's surety
than it would have been, if it had been then employed in all its severe opera-
tions upon man, so was his veracity eminent also in making good his
threatening, in inflicting the punishment included in it upon our nature as-
sumed by a mighty person, and upon that person in our nature, who was
infinitely higher than our nature.

(2.) His justice and righteousness are not prejudiced by his patience.
There is a hatred of the sin in his holiness, and a sentence passed against
the sin in his justice, though the execution of that sentence be suspended,
and the person reprieved by patience, which is impUed : Eccles. viii. 11,
' Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore
the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil ;' sentence is
passed, but a speedy execution is stopped.

* Perer. in loc.

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 511

Some of the Iieathens, who would not imagine God unjust, and yet seeing
the villanies and oppressions of men in the world remain unpunished, and
frequently beholding prosperous wickedness, to free him from the charge of
injustice, denied his providence and actual government of the world ; for if
he did take notice of human aflairs, and concern himself in what was done
upon the earth, they could not think an infinite goodness and justice could
be so slow to punish oppressors and relieve the miserable, and leave the
world in that disorder under the injustice of men. They judged such a
patience as was exercised by him, if he did govern the world, was drawn out
beyond the line of fit and just. Is it not a presumption in men to prescribe
a rule of righteousness and conveniency to their Creator ? It might be
demanded of such, whether they never injured any in their lives ? and when
certainly they have, one way or other, would they not think it a very unworthy,
if not unjust thing, that a person so injured by them should take a speedy and
severe revenge on them ? And if every man should do the like, would there
not be a speedy despatch made of mankind ? Would not the world be a
shambles, and men rush forward to one another's destruction, for the wrongs
they have mutually received ? If it be accounted a virtue in man, and no
unrighteousness, not presently to be all on fire against an ofience, by what
right should any question the consistency of God's patience with his justice ?
Do we praise the lenity of parents to children, and shall we disparage the
long-suffering of God to men ? We do not censure the righteousness of
physicians and chirurgeons, because they cut not off" a corrupt member this day
as well as to-morrow ? And is it just to asperse God because he doth defer
his vengeance, which man assumes to himself a right to do ? We never
account him a bad governor that defers the trial, and consequently the con-
demnation and execution of a notorious offender, for important reasons, and
beneficial to the public, either to make the nature of his crime more evident,
or to find out the rest of his accomplices by his discovery. A governor
indeed were unjust if he commanded that which were unrighteous, and for-
bade that which were worthy and commendable ; but if he delays the execu-
tion of a convicted offender for weighty reasons, either for the benefit of the
state whereof he is the ruler, or for some advantage to the offender himself,
to make him have a sense of, and a regret for, his offence, we account him
not unjust for this. God doth not by his patience dispense with the holiness
of his law, nor cut off anything from its due authority. If men do strengthen
themselves by his long-suffering against his law, it is their fault, not any
unrighteousness in him. He will take a time to vindicate the righteousness
of his own commands, if men will wholly neglect the time of his patience, in
forbearing to pay a dutiful observance to his precept. If justice be natural
to him, and he cannot but punish sin, yet he is not necessitated to consume
sinners, as the fire doth stubble put into it, which hath no command over its
own qualities to restrain them from acting ; but God is a free agent, and may
choose his own time for the distribution of that punishment his nature leads
him to. Though he be naturally just, yet it is not so natural to him as to
deprive him of a dominion over his own acts, and a freedom in the exerting
them what time he judge th most convenient in his wisdom. God is neces-
sarily holy, and is necessarily angry with sin ; his nature can never like it,
and cannot but be displeased with it ; yet he hath a liberty to restrain the
effects of this anger for a time, without disgracing his holiness, or being
intei-preted to act unrighteously, as well as a prince or state may suspend
the execution of a law, which they will never break, only for a time and for
a public benefit.

If God should presently execute his justice, this perfection of patience,

512 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

which is a part of his goodness, would never have an opportunity of discovery.
Part of his glory, for which he created the world, would lie in obscurity from
the knowledge of his creature. His justice would be signal in the destruc-
tion of sinners, but this stream of his goodness would be stopped up from any
motion. One perfection must not cloud another, God hath his seasons to
discover all, one after another; * The times and seasons are in his own power,'
Acts i. 7 ; the seasons of manifesting his own perfections as well as other
things ; succession of them in their distinct appearance makes no invasion
upon the rights of any. If justice should complain of an injury from patience,
because it is delayed, patience hath more reason to complain of an injury
from justice, that by such a plea it would be wholly obscured and unactive.
For this perfection hath the shortest time to act its part of any, it hath no
stage but this world to move in ; mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to
display itself to eternity, but long-suffering hath only a short-lived earth for
the compass of its operation.

Again, justice is so far from being wronged by patience, that it rather is
made more illustrious, and hath the fuller scope to exercise itself. It is the
more righted for being deferred, and will have stronger grounds than before
for its activity. The equity of it will be more apparent to every reason, the
objections more fully answered against it, when the way of dealing with
sinners by patience hath been slighted. When this dam of long-suffering
is removed, the floods of fiery justice will rush down with more force and
violence. Justice will be fully recompensed for the delay, when, after
patience is abused, it can spread itself over the offender with a more unques-
tionable authority, it will have more arguments to hit the sinner in the
teeth with, and silence him. There will be a sharper edge for every stroke;
the sinner must not only pay for the score of his former sins, but the score
of abused patience, so that justice hath no reason to commence a suit
against God's slowness to anger. What it shall want by the fulness of
mercy upon the truly penitent, it will gain by the contempt of patience on
the impenitent abusers. When men by such a carriage are ripened for the
stroke of justice, justice may strike without any regret in itself, or pull-back
from mercy. The contempt of long-suffering will silence the pleas of the
one, and spirit the severity of the other. To conclude ; since God hath
glorified his justice on Christ as a surety for sinners, his patience is so far
from interfering with the rights of his justice, that it promotes it. It is
dispensed to this end, that God might pardon with honour, both upon the
score of purchased mercy and contented justice ; that, by a penitent sinner's
return, his mercy might be acknowledged free, and the satisfaction of his
justice by Christ be glorified in believing ; for he is long-suffering, from an
' unwillingness that any should perish, but that all should come to repent-
ance,' 2 Pet. iii. 9; i.e. all to whom the promise is made, for to such the
apostle speaks, and calls it ' long-suffering to us- ward.' And repentance
being an acknowledgment of the demerit of sin, and a breaking off unright-
eousness, gives a particular glory to the freeness of mercy and the equity
of justice.

n. The second thing, how this patience or slowness to anger is mani-
fested.

1. To our first parents. His slowness to anger was evidenced in not
directing his artillery against them when they first attempted to rebel. He
might have struck them dead when they began to bite at the temptation, and
were inclinable to a surrender ; for it was a degree of sinning, and a breach
of loyalty, as well, though not so much, as the consummating act. God

NaHUJI I, 3.J god's PATIENCE . 513

might have given way to the floods of his wrath at the first spring of man's
aspiring thoughts, when the monstrous motion of being as G-od began to be
curdled in his heart ; but he took no notice of any of their embryo sins, till
they came to a ripeness, and started out of the womb of their minds into the
open air. And after he had brought his sin to perfection, God did not
presently send that death upon him which he had merited, but continued
his life to the space of 930 years. Gen. v. 5. The sun and stars were not
arrested from doing their office for him, creatures were continued for his
use, the earth did not swallow him up, nor a thunderbolt from heaven raze
out the memory of him. Though he had deserved to be treated with such
a severity for his ungrateful demeanour to his Creator and benefactor, and
affecting an equality with him, yet God continued him with a sufficiency for
his content after he turned rebel, though not with such a liberality as when
he remained a loyal subject. And though he foresaw that he would not
make an end of sinning but with an end of living, he used him not in the
same manner as he had used the devils. He added days and years to him
after he had deserved death, and hath for this five thousand years continued
the propagation of mankind, and derived from his loins an innumerable
posterity, and hath crowned multitudes of them with hoary heads. He
might have extinguished the human race at the first, but since he hath
preserved it till this day, it must be interpreted nothing else but the effect
of an admirable patience.

2. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Gentiles. What they are, we
need no other witness than the apostle Paul, who sums up many of their
crimes, Rom. i. 29-82. He doth preface the catalogue with a comprehen-
sive expression, ' being filled with all unrighteousness ;' and concludes it
with a dreadful aggravation, ' They not only do the same, but have pleasure
in them that do them.' They were so soaked and naturalised in wicked-
ness, that they had no delight, and found no sweetness, in anything else but
what was in itself abominable. All of them were plunged in idolatry and
superstition ; none of them but either set up their great men or creatures
beneficial to the world, and some the damned spirits in his stead, and paid
an adoration to insensible creatures or devils, which was due to God. Some
were so depraved in their lives and actions, that it seemed to be the interest
of the rest of the world that they should have been extinguished, for the
instruction of their contemporaries and posterity. The best of them had
turned all religion into a fable, coined a world of rites, some unnatural in
themselves, and most of them unbecoming a rational creature to offer and
a Deity to accept ; yet he did not presently arm himself against them with
fire and sword, nor stopped the course of their generations, nor tare out all
those relics of natural light which were left in their minds. He did not do
what he might have done, but he * winked at the times of that ignorance,'
Acts xvii. 30, their ignorant idolatry ; for that it refers to, ver. 29, ' They
thought the Godhead was like to gold or silver, or stone graven by art, and
men's device' ; b'jnoihijv, overlooking them. He demeaned himself so as if
he did not take notice of them. He winked as if he did not see them, and
would not deal so severely with them. The eye of his justice seemed to
wink, in not calling them to an account for their sin.

3. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Israelites. You know how
often they are called * a stiff-necked people ;' they are said to do evil ' from
their youth,' i.e. from the time wherein they were erected a nation and
commonwealth ; and that ' the city had been a provocation of his anger and
of his fury from the day that they built it even to this day,' i.e. the day of
Jeremiah's prophecy, ' that he should remove it from before bis face,' Jer.

VOL. II. K k

514 chaknock's woeks. [Nahum I. 8.

xxxii. 31 ; from the days of Solomon, say some, which is too much a
curtailing of the text, as though their provocations had taken date no higher
than from the time of Solomon's rearing the temple and beautifying the city,
whereby it seemed to be a new building. They began more early, they
scarce discontinued their revolting from God, they were a * grief to him forty
years together in the wilderness,' Ps. xcv. 10 ; * yet he suffered their man-
ners,' Acts xiii. 18. He bore with their ill behaviour and sauciness towards
him ; and no sooner was Joshua's head laid, and the elders that were their
conductors gathered to their fathers, but the next generation forsook God,
and smutted themselves with the idolatry of the nations, Judges ii. 7, 10,
11. And when he punished them, by prospering the arms of their enemies
against them, they were no sooner delivered upon their cry of humiliation,
but they began a new scene of idolatry. And though he brought upon them
the power of the Babylonian empire, and laid chains upon them, to bring
them to their original mind ; and at seventy years' end he struck ofi' their
chains, by altering the whole posture of affairs in that part of the world for
their sakes, overturning one empire and settling another, for their restora-
tion to their ancient city ; and though they did not after disown him for
their God, and set up Baal in his throne, yet they multiplied fooHsh tradi-
tions, whereby they impaired the authority of the law, yet he sustained them
with a wonderful patience, and preferred them before all other people in the
first offers of the gospel. And after they had outraged, not only his servants
the prophets, but his Son the Kedeemer, yet he did not forsake them, but
employed his apostles to solicit them, and publish among them the doctrine
of salvation ; so that his treating this people might well be called much
long-suffering, it being above fifteen hundred years wherein he bore with
them, or mildly punished them far less than their deserts. Their coming
out of Egypt being about the year of the world 2450, and their final destruc-
tion as a commonwealth not till about forty years after the death of Christ ;
and all this while his patience did sometimes wholly restrain his justice, and
sometimes let it fall upon them in some few drops, but made no total devas-
tation of their country, nor wrote his revenge in extraordinary bloody
characters, till the Roman conquest, wherein he put a period to them both
as a church and state.

In particular this patience is manifest,

(1.) In his giving warning of judgments before he orders them to go forth.
He doth not punish in a passion, and hastily. He speaks before he strikes,
and speaks that he may not strike. Wrath is published before it is
executed, and that a long time. An hundred and twenty years' advertise-
ment was given to a debauched world, before the heavens were opened to
spout down a deluge upon them. He will not be accused of coming unawares
upon a people. He inflicts nothing but what he foretold, either immediately
to the people that provoke him, or anciently to them that have been their
forerunners in the same provocation : Hosea vii. 12, ' I will chastise them
as their congregation hath heard.' Many of the leaves of the Old Testament
are full of those presages and warnings of approaching judgment. These
make up a great part of the volume of it in various editions, according to
the state of the several provoking times. Warnings are given to those
people that are most abominable in his sight : Zeph. ii. 1, 2, ' Gather j^our-
selves together, yea, gather together, 0 nation not desired,' — it is a meiosis,
0 nation abhorred, — ' before the decree bring forth.' He sends his heralds
before he sends his armies. He summons them by the voice of his prophets,
before he confounds them by the voice of his thunders. When a parley is
beaten, a white flag of peace is hung out, before a black flag of fury is set

Nahum I. 3,] god's patience. 515

up. He seldom cuts down men by his judgments before be hath ' hewed
them by his prophets,' Hosea vi. 5. Not a remarkable judgment but was
foretold, — the flood to the old world by Noah, the famine to Egypt by
Joseph, the earthquake by Amos, chap. i. 1, the storm from Chaldea by
Jeremiah, the captivity of the ten tribes by Hosea, the total destruction of
Jerusalem and the temple by Christ himself. He hath chosen the best
persons in the world to give those intimations : Noah, the most righteous
person on the earth, for the old world ; and his Son, the most beloved person
in heaven, for the Jews in the later time. And in other parts of the world,
and in the later times, where he hath not warned by prophets, he hath
supplied it by prodigies in the air and earth. Histories are full of such
items from heaven. Lesser judgments are fore-warners of greater, as light-
nings before thuuder are messengers to tell us of a succeeding clap.

[1.] He doth often give warning of judgments. He comes not to
extremity, till he hath often shaken the rod over men ; he thunders often
before he crusheth them with his thunderbolt ; he doth not, till after the
' first and second admonition,' punish a rebel, as he would have us reject a
heretic. ' He speaks once, yea, twice,' Job xxxiii. 14, ' and man perceives
it not ;' he sends one message after another, and waits the success of many
messages before he strikes. Eight prophets were ordered to acquaint the
old world with approaching judgment ; 2 Peter ii. 5, He ' saved Noah the
eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the
world of the ungodly,' called the eighth in respect of his preaching, not ia
regard of his preservation ; he was the eighth preacher, in order from the
beginning of the world, that endeavoured to restore the world to the way of
righteousness. Most indeed consider him here as the eighth person saved ;
so do our translators, and therefore add person, which is not in the Greek.
Some others consider him here as the eighth preacher of righteousness,
reckoning Enoch, the son of Seth, the first, grounding it upon Gen. iv. 26,
' Then began men to call on the name of the Lord ;' Heh. ' Then it was
begun to call in the name of the Lord ;' ro ovo/mo, tov ■/.uolcv hov, Sept., ' He
began to call in the name of the Lord,' which others render, he began to
preach, or call upon men in the name of the Lord. The word K'Hp signi-
fies to preach, or to call upon men by preaching: Prov. i. 21, ' Wisdom
crieth' or ' preaches.' And if this be so, as it is very probable, it is easy
to reckon him the eighth preacher, by numbering the successive heads of
the generations. Gen. v., beginning at Enoch, the first preacher of right-
eousness ; so many there were before God choked the old world with water
and swept them away.* It is clear he often did admonish, by his prophets,
the Jews of their sin, and the wrath which should come upon them. One
prophet, Hosea, prophesied seventy years ; for he prophesied in the days
of four kings of Judah and one of Israel ; Jeroboam the son of Joash, Hosea
i. 1, or Jeroboam the second of that name. Uzziah, king of Judah, in
whose reign Hosea prophesied, lived thirty-eight years after the death of
Jeroboam ; the second Jotham, Uzziah's successor, reigned sixteen years ;
Ahaz, sixteen ; Hezekiah, twenty-nine years. Now, take nothing of Heze-
kiah's time, and date the beginning of his prophecy from the last year of
Jeroboam's reign, and the time of Hosea' s prophecy will be seventy years
complete ; wherein God warned those people, and waited the return par-
ticularly of Israel. t And not less than five of those we call the lesser pro-
phets, were sent to foretell the destruction of the ten tribes, and to call them
to repentance, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Jonah. And though we have
nothing of Jonah's prophecy in this concern of Israel, yet that he lived in

* Vid. Gell'B uyyi'Koy.oaTia. f Sanctius. I'rolegom. in Hosea, Proleg.the 3d.

616 ' chaenock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

the time of the same Jeroboam, and prophesied things which are not upon
record in the book of Jonah, is clear, 2 Kings xiv. 15. And besides those,
Isaiah prophesied also in the reign of the same kings as Hosea did, Isa. i. 1.
And it is God's usual method to send forth his servants, and when their
admonitions are slighted, he commissions others before he sends out his
destroying armies. Mat. xxii. 3, 4, 7.

[2.] He doth often give warning of judgments that he might not pour out
his wrath. He summons them to a surrender of themselves, and a return
from their rebellion, that they might not feel the force of his arms. He
offers peace before he shakes off the dust of his feet, that his despised peace
might not return in vain to bim to solicit a revenge from his anger. He
hath a right to punish upon the first commission of a crime, but he warns
men of what they have deserved, of what his justice moves him to inflict,
that by having recourse to his mercy he might not exercise the rights of his
justice. God sought to kill Moses for not circumcising his son, Exod. iv. 24.
Could God that sought it miss of a way to do it ? Could a creature lurch or
fly from him ? God put on the garb of an enemy, that Moses might be dis-
couraged from being an instrument of his own ruin. God manifested an
anger against Moses for his neglect, as if he would then have destroyed him,
that Moses might prevent it by casting off his carelessness, and doing his
duty. He sought to kill him by some evident sign that Moses might escape
the judgment by his obedience. He threatens Nineveh by the prophet with
destruction, that Nineveh's repentance might make void the prophecy. He
fights with men by the sword of his mouth that he might not pierce them by
the sword of his wrath. He threatens, that men might prevent the execution
of his threatening ; he terrifies, that he might not destroy, but that men by
humiliation may lie prostrate before him, and move the bowels of his mercy
to a louder sound than the voice of his anger ; he takes time to whet his
sword, that men may turn themselves from the edge of it ; he roars like a
lion, that men, by hearing his voice, may shelter themselves from being
torn by his wrath. There is patience in the sharpest threatening, that we
may avoid the scourge. Who can charge God with an eagerness to revenge,
that sends so many heralds, and so often before he strikes, that he might be
prevented from striking ? His threatenings have not so much of a black
flag as of an olive branch. He lifts up his hand before he strikes, that men
might see and avert the stroke, Isa. xxvi. 11.

(2.) His patience is manifest in long delaying his threatened judgments,
though he finds no repentance in the rebels. He doth sometimes delay his
lighter punishments, because he doth not delight in torturing his creatures,
but he doth longer delay his destroying punishments, such as put an end to
men's happiness, and remit them to their final and unchangeable state,
because he doth not delight in the death of a sinner. While he is preparing
his arrows, he is waiting for an occasion to lay them aside, and dull their
points that he may with honour march back again, and disband his armies.
He brings lighter smarts sooner, that men might not think him asleep, but
he suspends the more terrible judgments, that men might be led to repent-
ance. He scatters not his consuming fires at the first, but brings on ruining
vengeance with a slow pace : * Sentence against an evil work is not speedily
executed,' Eccles. viii. 11. The Jews therefore say, that Michael, the
minister of justice, flies with one wing, but Gabriel, the minister of mercy,
with two. A hundred and twenty years did God wait upon the old world, and
delay their punishment all the time ' the ark was preparing,' 1 Peter iii. 20 ;
wherein that wicked generation did not enjoy only a bare patience, but a
striving patience : Gen. vi. 3, ' My Spirit shall not always strive with man,

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 517

yet his days shall he one hundred and twenty years,' the days wherein I
will strive with him, that his long-suffering might not lose all its fruit, and
remit the objects of it into the hands of consuming justice. It was the
tenth generation of the world from Adam when the deluge overflowed it, so
long did God bear with them ; and the tenth generation from Noah,
wherein Sodom was consumed. God did not come to keep his assizes in
Sodom, till ' the cry of their sins was very strong,' that it had been a wrong
to his justice to have restrained it any longer. The cry was so loud that he
could not be at quiet, as it were, on his throne of glory for the disturbing
noise, Gen. xviii. 20, 21. Sin transgresseth the law ; the law being vio-
lated, solicits justice ; justice being urged, pleads for punishment ; the cry
of their sins did as it were force him from heaven to come down, and examine
■what cause there was for that clamour. Sin cries loud and long before he
takes his sword in hand. Four hundred years he kept off deserved destruc-
tion from the Amorites, and deferred making good his promise to Abraham,
of giving Canaan to his posterity, out of his long-suffering to the Amorites :
Gen. XV. 16, ' In the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for
the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.' Their measure was filling
then, but not so full as to put a stop to any further patience till four hundred
years after. The usual time in succeeding generations from the denouncing
of judgments to the execution is forty years ; this some ground upon Ezek.
iv. 6, * Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days,' taking
each day for a year. Though Hosea lived seventy years, yet from the
beginning of his prophesying judgments against Israel, to the pouring them
out upon that idolatrous people, it was forty years. Hosea, as was men-
tioned before, prophesied against them in the days of Jeroboam the Second,
in whose time God did wonderfully deliver Israel, 2 Kings xiv. 26, 27.
From that time to the total destruction of the ten tribes it was forty years,
as may easily be computed from the story, 2 Kings xv., xvi., xvii., by the
reign of the succeeding kings. So forty j^ears after the most horrid villany
that was ever committed in the face of the sun, viz., the crucifying the Son
of God, was Jerusalem destroyed, and the inhabitants captived ; so long
did God delay a visible punislament for such an outrage. Sometimes he
prolongs sending a threatened judgment upon a mere shadow of humiliation,
so he did that denounced against Ahab. He turned it over to his posterity,
and adjourned it to another season, 1 Kings xxi. 29. He doth not issue
out an arrest upon one transgression ; you often find him not commencing a
suit against men till three and four transgressions. The first of Amos, all
along that chapter, and the second chapter, for ' three and four,' i. e. seven,
a certain number for an uncertain. He gives not orders to his judgments
to march till men be obstinate, and refuse any commerce with him. He
stops them till there be no remedy, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16. It must be a great
wickedness that gives vent to them : Hosea x. 15, Heh., 'your wickedness
of wickedness.' He is so slow to anger, and stays the punishment his
enemies deserve, that he may seem to have forgot his kindness to his
friends : Ps. xliv. 24, ' Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our
affliction and oppression ? ' He lets his people groan under the yoke of
their enemies, as if he were made up of kindness to his enemies, and anger
against his friends. This delaying of punishment to evil men is visible in
his suspending the terrifying acts of conscience, and supporting it only in
its checking, admonishing, and controlling acts. The patience of a governor
is seen in the patient mildness of his deputy. David's conscience did not
terrify him till nine months after his sin of murder. Should God set open
the mouth of this power within us, not only the earth, but our own bodies

518 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

and spirits would be a burden to us. It is long before God puts scorpions
into the hands of men's consciences to scourge them. He holds back the
rod, waiting for the hour of our return, as if that would be a recompence for
our offences, and his forbearance.

(3.) His patience is manifest in his unwillingness to execute his judgments
when he can delay no longer. ' He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the
children of men,' Lam. iii. 33 ; Heh., ' He doth not afflict from his heart.'
He takes no pleasure in it as he is creator. The height of men's provoca-
tions, and the necessity of the preserving his rights, and vindicating his
laws, obligeth him to it as he is the governor of the world ; as a judge
may willingly condemn a malefactor to death out of affection to the laws,
and desire to preserve the order of government ; but unwillingly, out of
compassion to the offender himself. When he resolved upon the destruc-
tion of the old world, he spake it as a God grieved with an occasion of
punishment, Gen. vi. 6, 7, compared together. When he came to reckon
with Adam, he ' walked,' he did not run with his sword in his hand upon
him, as a mighty man with an eagerness to destroy him. Gen. iii. 8, and
that ' in the cool of the day,' a time when men tired in the day are
unwilling to engage in a hard employment. His exercising judgment is a
'coming out of his place,' Isa. xxvi. 1, Micah i. 3. He comes out of his
station to exercise judgment ; a throne is more his place Ihan a tribunal.
Every prophecy loaded with threatenings is called the ' burden of the Lord,'
a burden to him to execute it as well as to men to suffer it. Though three
angels came to Abraham about the punishment of Sodom, whereof one
Abraham speaks to as to God, yet but two appeared at the destruction of
Sodom, as if the governor of the world were unwilling to be present at such
dreadful work. Gen. xix. 1. And when the man that had the inkhorn by
his side, that was appointed to mark those that were to be preserved in the
common destruction, returned to give an account of the performing his
commission, Ezek. ix. 10, we read not of the return of those that were to
kill, as if God delighted only to hear again of his works of mercy, and had
no mind to hear again of his severe proceedings. The Jews, to shew God's
unwillingness to punish, imagine that hell was created the second day,
because that day's work is not pronounced good by God, as all the other
day's works are, Gen. i. 8.*

[1.] When God doth punish, he doth it with some regret. When he
hurls down his thunders, he seems to do it with a backward hand, because
with an unwilling heart. f He created, saith Chrysostom, the world in six
days, but was seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, which he had before
devoted to be razed to the ground. What is the reason, saith he, that God
is so quick to build up, but slow to pull down ? His goodness excites his
power to the one, but is not earnest to persuade him to the other. When
he comes to strike, he doth it with a sigh or groan : Isa. i. 24, ' Ah, I will
ease me of my adversaries, and avenge me of my enemies ;' ''irT; ah, a note
of grief. So Hosea vi. 4, ' 0 Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee ? O
Judah, what shall I do unto thee?' It is an additbitatio, a figure in
rhetoric, as if God were troubled, that he must deal so sharply with them,
and give them up to their enemies. I have tried all means to reclaim you,
I have used all ways of kindness, and nothing prevails. What shall I
do ? My mercy invites me to spare them, and their ingratitude provokes
me to ruin them. God had borne with that people of Israel almost three
hundred years, from the setting up of the calves at Dan and Bethel, sent
many a prophet to warn them, and spent many a rod to reform them.
* Mercer in Gen. i. 5. t Cressol. Decad. ii. p. 163.

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 519

And when lie comes to execute his threatenings, he doth it with a conflict
in himself. Hosea xi. 8, * How shall I give thee up, 0 Ephraim ? how
shall I deliver thee, Israel ? ' As if there were a pull-back in his own bowels,
he solemniseth their approaching funeral with a hearty groan, and takes his
farewell of the dying malefactor with a pang in himself. How often in
former times, when he had signed a warrant for their execution, did he
call it back? Ps. Ixxviii. 88, 'Many a time turned he his anger away.'
Many a time he recalled, or ' ordered his anger to return again,' as the
word signifies, as if he were irresolute what to do. He recalled it, as a man
doth his servant several times, when he is sending him upon an unwelcome
message ; or as a tender-hearted prince wavers, and trembles, when he is to
sign a writ for the death of a rebel that hath been before his favourite, as
if, when he had signed the writ, he blotted out his name again, and flung
away the pen. And his method is remarkable when he came to punish
Sodom : though the cry of their sin had been fierce in his ears, yet when he
comes to make inquisition he declares his intention to Abraham, as if he were
desirous that Abraham should have helped him to some arguments to stop
the outgoings of his judgment. He gave liberty to the best person in
the world to stand in the gap, and enter into a treaty with him, to shew
(saith one*) how willingly his mercy would have compounded with his
justice for their redemption. And Abraham interceded so long till he
was ashamed for pleading the cause of patience and mercy, to the wrong
of the rights of divine justice. Perhaps, had Abraham had the courage to
ask, God would have had the compassion to grant a reprieve just at the time
of execution.

[2. J His patience is manifest, in that when he begins to send out his
judgments, he doth it by degrees. His judgments are as the morning light,
which goes forth by degrees in the hemisphere, Hos. vi. 5. He doth not
shoot all his thunders at once, and bring his sharpest judgments in array at
one time, but gradually, that a people may have time to turn to him, Joel
i. 4 : first the palmer-worm, then the locust, then the canker-worm, then the
caterpillar ; what one left, the other was to eat, if there was not a timely
return. A Jewish writer f saith, these judgments came not all in one year,
but one year after another. The palmer-worm and locust might have eaten
all, but divine patience set bounds to the devouring creatures. God had
been fii-st ' as a moth to Israel ;' Hos. v. 12, 'Therefore will I be to the
house of Ephraim as a moth.' Rivet translates it I have been ; in the Hebrew
it is 1, without adding, / have been or I iviU be, and more probably I have
been. I was as a moth, which makes little holes in a garment, and consumes
it not all at once, and as ' rottenness to the house of Judah,' or a worm
that eats into wood by degrees. Indeed, this people had consumed insensi-
bly, partly by civil combustions, change of governors, foreign invasions, yet
they were as obstinate in their idolatry as ever ; at last, God would be no
longer to tbem as a moth, but as a lion, tear and go away, ver. 14. So,
Hos. ii., God had disowned Israel for his spouse, — ver. 2, ' She is not my
wife, neither am I her husband,' — yet he had not taken away her ornaments,
which, by the right of divorce, he might have done, but still expected her
reformation, for that the threatening intimates : ver. 3, let her put away her
whoredom, ' lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day when she was
born.' If she returned, she might recover what she had lost ; if not, she
might be stripped of what remained. Thus God dealt with Judah, Ezekiel
ix. 3. The glory of God goes first from the cherub to the threshold of the
house, and stays there, as if he had a mind to be invited back again ; then
* i'iorce, Siuner Impleaded, p. 227. t Kimcbi.

520 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

it goes from the threshold of the house, and stands over the cherubims, as
if upon a penitent call it would drop down again to its ancient station and
seat, over which it hovered, Ezek. x. 18 ; and when he was not solicited to
return, he departs out of the citj, and stood upon the mountain, which is on
the east part of the city, Ezek. xi. 23, looking still towards, and hovering
about the temple, which was on the east of Jerusalem, as if loath to depart
and abandon the place and people. He walks so leisurely with his rod in
his hand, as if he had a mind rather to fling it away, than use it. His
patience in not pouring out all his vials, is more remarkable than his wrath
in pouring out one or two. Thus hath God made his slowness to anger
visible to us in the gradual punishment of us ; first, the pestilence on this
city, then firing our houses, consumption of trade, these have not been an-
swered with such a carriage as God expects, therefore a greater is reserved.
I dare prognosticate, upon reasons you may gather from what hath been spoke
before, if I be not much mistaken, the forty years of his usual patience are
very near expired, he hath inflicted some that he might be met with in a way
of repentance, and omit with honour the inflicting the remainder.

[4.] His patience is manifest in moderating his judgments, when he sends
them. Doth he empty his quiver of his arrows, or exhaust his magazines of
thunder ? No ; he could roll one thunderbolt successively upon all man-
kind ; it is as easy with him to create a perpetual motion of lightning and
thunder, as of the sun and stars, and make the world as terrible by the one
as it is delightful by the other. He opens not all his store ; he sends out a
light party to skirmish with men, and puts not in array his whole army. ' He
stirs not up all his wrath,' Ps. Ixxviii. 38 ; he doth but pinch, where he
might have torn asunder ; when he takes away much, he leaves enough to
support us. If he had stirred up all his anger, he had taken away all, and
our lives to boot. He rakes up but a few sparks, takes but one firebrand
to fling upon men, when he might discharge the whole furnace upon them ;
he sends but a few drops out of the cloud, which he might make to break in
the gross, and fall down upon our heads to overwhelm us ; he abates much
of what he might do. When he might sweep away a whole nation by deluges
of water, corruption of the air, or convulsions of the earth, or by other ways
that are not wanting at his order, he picks out only some persons, some
families, some cities, sends a plague into one house and not into another.
Here is patience to the st^k of a nation, while he inflicts punishment upon
some of the most notorious sinners in it. Herod is suddenly snatched away,
being willingly flattered into the thoughts of his being a god ; God singled
out the chief in the herd, for whose sake he had been aff'ronted by the rabble.
Acts xii. 22, 23. Some find him sparing them, while others feel him destroy-
ing them ; he arrests some, when he might seize all, all being his debtors ;
and often in great desolations brought upon a people for their sin, he hath
left a stump in the earth, as Daniel speaks, Dan. iv. 15, for a nation to grow
upon it again, and arise to a stronger constitution. He doth punish ' Jess
than our inquities deserve,' Ezra ix. 13, and 'rewards us not according to
our iniquities,' Ps. ciii. 10. The greatness of any punishment in this life,
answers not the greatness of the crime. Though there be an equity in what-
soever he doth, yet there is not an equality to what we deserve. Our ini-
quities would justify a severer treating of us ; his justice goes not here to
the end of its line, it is stopped in its progress, and the blows of it weakened
by his patience. He did not curse the earth after Adam's fall, that it should
bring forth no fruit, but that it should not bring forth fruit without the weari-
some toil of man ; and subjected him to distempers presently, but inflicted
not death immediately ; while he punished him, he supported him ; and

Nahum I. 3.j god's patience. ' 521

•while he expelled him from paradise, lie did not order him not to cast his eye
towards it, and conceive some hopes of regaining that happy place.

[5.] His patience is seen in giving great mercies after provocations. He
is so slow to anger, that he heaps many kindnesses upon a rebel, instead of
punishment. There is a prosperous wickedness, wherein the provokers'
strength continues firm ; the troubles, which like clouds drop upon others,
are blown away from them, and they are ' not plagued like other men,' that
have a more worthy demeanour towards God, Ps. Ixxiii. 3-5. He doth not
only continue their lives, but sends out fresh beams of his goodness upon
them, and calls them by his blessings, that they may acknowledge their own
fault and his bounty, which he is not obliged to by any gratitude he meets
with from them, but by the richness of his own patient nature ; for he finds
the unthankfulness of men as great as his benefits to them. He doth not
only continue his outward mercies, while we continue our sins, but sometimes
gives fresh benefits after new provocations, that if possible he might excite
an ingenuity in men. When Israel at the Eed Sea flung dirt in the face of
God, by quarrelling with his servant Moses for bringing them out of Egypt,
and misjudging God in his design of deliverance, and were ready to submit
themselves to their former oppressors, Exod. xiv. 11, 12, which might justly
have urged God to say to them, Take your own course, yet he is not only
patient under their unjust charge, but makes bare his arm in a deliverance
at the Red Sea, that was to be an amazing monument to the world in all
ages ; and afterwards, when they repiningly quarrelled with him in their
wants in the wilderness, he did not only not revenge himself upon them, or
cast ofi'the conduct of them, but bore with them by a miraculous long-suf-
fering, and suppHed them with miraculous provision, manna from heaven, and
water from a rock. Food is given to support us, and clothes to cover us,
and divine patience makes the creatures, which we turn to another use than
what they were at first intended for, serve us contrary to their own genius ;
for had they reason, no question but they would complain, to be subjected
to the service of man, who hath been so ungrateful to their Creator, and
groan at the abuse of God's patience, in the abuse they themselves sufier from
the hands of man.

[6.] All this is more manifest, if we consider the provocations he hath.
Wherein his slowness to anger infinitely transcends the patience of any crea-
ture ; nay, the spirits of all the angels and glorified saints in heaven would
be too narrow to bear the sins of the world for one day, nay, not so much
as the sins of the churches, which is a little spot in the whole world ; it is
because ' he is the Lord,' one of an infinite power over himself, that not only
the whole mass of the rebellious world, but of ' the sons of Jacob ' (either
considered as a church and nation springing from the loins of Jacob, or con-
sidered as the regenerate part of the world, sometimes called the seed of
Jacob), ' are not consumed,' Mai. iii. 6. A Jonah was angry with God
for recalling his anger from a sinful people. Had God committed the
government of the world to the glorified saints, who are perfect in love and
holiness, the world would have had an end long ago ; they would have acted
that which they sue for at the hands of God, and is not granted them : Rev.
vi. 10, ' How long. Lord, holy and true, dost thou not avenge our blood
on them that dwell on the earth ? ' God hath designs of patience above the
world, above the unsinning angels, and perfectly renewed spirits in glory.
The greatest created long-suffering is infinitely disproportioned to the divine.
Fire from heaven would have been showered down before the greatest part
of a day were spent, if a created patience had the conduct of the world, though
that creature were possessed with the spirit of patience, extracted from all

522 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

the creatures which are in heaven, or are, or ever were, upon the earth.
Methinks Moses intimates this, for as soon as God had passed by, proclaim-
ing his name gracious and long-suflfering, as soon as ever Moses had paid
his adoration, he falls a-praying that God would go with the Israelites :
Exod. xxxiv. 8, 9, * For it is a stiff-necked people.' What an argument is
here for God to go along with them ! He might rather, since he had heard
him but just before say he would ' by no means clear the guilty,' desire God
to stand further oft" from them, for fear the fire of his wrath should burst out
from him, to burn them as he did the Sodomites ; but he considers that as
none but God had such anger to desti-oy them, so none but God had such a
patience to bear with them. It is as much as if he should have said. Lord,
if thou shonldst send the most tender-hearted angel in heaven to have the
guidance of this people, they would be a lost people ; a period will quickly
be set to their lives, no created strength can restrain its power from crush-
ing such a stiff-necked people ; flesh and blood cannot bear them, nor any
created spirit of a greater might.

First, Consider the greatness of the provocations. No light matter, but
actions of a great defiance. What is the practical language of most in the
world but that of Pharaoh ! ' Who is the Lord that I should obey him ? '
How many question his being, and more, his authority ! What blasphemies
of him, what reproaches of his majesty ! Men ' drinking up iniquity like
water,' and with a haste and ardency 'rushing into sin, as the horse into
the battle.' What is there in the reasonable creature that hath the quickest
capacity, and the deepest obligation to serve him, but opposition and enmity,
a slight of him in everything, yea, the services most seriously performed,
unsuited to the royalty and purity of so great a being ! Such provocations
as dare him to his face, that are a burden to so righteous a judge, and so
great a lover of the authority and majesty of his laws, that, were there but a
spark of anger in him, it is a wonder that it doth not shew itself. When he
is invaded in all his attributes, it is astonishing that this single one of
patience and meekness should withstand the assault of all the rest of his
perfections. His being, which is attacked by sin, speaks for vengeance ;
his justice cannot be imagined to stand silent, without charging the sinner ;
his holiness cannot but encourage his justice to urge its pleas, and be an
advocate for it ; his omniscience proves the truth of all the charge, and his
abused mercy hath little encouragement to make opposition to the indict-
ment : nothing but patience stands in the gap to keep off the arrest of judg-
ment from the sinner.

SecomJh/, His patience is manifest, if you consider the multitudes of these
provocations. Every man hath sin enough in a day to make him stand
amazed at divine patience, and to call it, as well as the apostle did, *' all
iong-suffering,' 1 Tim. i. 16. How few duties of a perfectly right stamp are
performed ! What unworthy considerations mix themselves, like dross, with
our purest and sincerest gold ! How more numerous are the respects of the
worshippers of him to themselves than unto him ! How many services are
paid him, not out of love to him, but because he should do us no hurt, and
some service, when we do not so much design to please him as to please
ourselves, by expectations of a reward from him ! What master would
endure a servant that endeavoured to please him only because he should not
kill him ? Is that former charge of God upon the old world yet out of
date, that ' the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man was only
evil, and that continually ' ? Gen vi. 5. Was not the new world as charge-
able with it as the old ? Certainly it was, Gen. viii. 21, and is of as much
force this very minute as it was then. How many are the sins against

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 523

knowledge, as well as those of ignorance ; presumptuous sins, as well as
those of infirmity ! How numerous those of omission and commission ! It
is above the reach of any man's understanding to conceive all the blasphemies,
oaths, thefts, adulteries, murders, oppressions, contempt of religion, the
open idolatries of Turks and heathens, the more spiritual and refined idola-
tries of others.* Add to those the ingratitude of those that profess his name,
their pride, earthliness, carelessness, sluggishness to divine duties, and in
every one of those a multitude of provocations ; the whole man being engaged
in every sin, the understanding contriving it, the will embracing it, the
affections complying with it, and all the members of the body instruments
in the acting the unrighteousness of it. Every one of these faculties be-
stowed upon men by him, are armed against him in every act ; and in every
employment of them there is a distinct provocation, though centred in one
sinful end and object. What are the offences all the men of the world
receive from their fellow-creatures, to the injuries God receives from men,
but as a small dust of earth to the whole mass of earth and heaven too !
"What multitudes of sins is one profane wretch guilty of in the space of
twenty, forty, fifty years ? Who can compute the vast number of his trans-
gressions, from the first use of reason to the time of the separation of his
soul from his body, from his entrance into the world to his exit ? What are
those to those of a whole village of the like inhabitants ? What are those
to those of a great city ? Who can number up all the foul-mouthed oaths,
the beastly excess, the goatish uncleanness committed in the space of a day,
year, twenty years, in this city, much less in the whole nation, least of all in
the whole world ? were it no more than the common idolatry of former
ages, when the whole world turned their backs upon their Creator, and
passed him by to sue to a creature, a stock, or stone, or a degraded spirit.
How provoking would it be to a prince to see a whole city under his domi-
nion deny him a respect, and pay it to his scullion, or the common execu-
tioner he employs ! Add to this the unjust invasions of kings, the oppres-
sions exercised upon men, all the private and public sins that have been
committed in the world, ever since it began. The Gentiles were described
by the apostle, Rom. i. 29-31, in a black character, they were haters of
God ; yet how did the riches of his patience preserve multitudes of such
disingenuous persons, and how many millions of such haters of him breathe
every day in his air, and are maintained by his bounty, have their tables
spread and their cups filled to the brim, and that too in the midst of reite-
rated belchings of their emnity against him ? All are under sufiicient pro-
vocations of him to the highest indignation. The presiding angels over
nations could not forbear, in love and honour to their government, to arm
themselves to the destruction of their several charges, if divine patience did
not set them a pattern, and their obedience incline them to expect his
orders before they act what their zeal would prompt them to. The devils
would be glad of a commission to destroy the world, but that his patience
puts a stop to their fury, as well as his own justice.

Thirdhj, Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his
hands all the day to a rebellions world, Isa. Isv. 2. All men's day, all
God's day, which is a thousand years, he hath borne with the gross of man-
kind, with all the nations of the world in a long succession of ages, for five
thousand years and upwards already, and will bear with them till the time
comes for the world's dissolution. He hath suffered the monstrous acts of
men, and endured the contradictions of a sinful world against himself, from
the first sin of Adam to the last committed this minute. The hue of his
* Lessius, p. 152.

524 chaknock's woeks. [Nahum I. 3.

patience hath run along with the duration of the world to this day, and there
is not any one of Adam's posterity but hath been expensive to him, and
partaked of the riches of it.

Fourthly, All these he bears when he hath a sense of them. He sees
every day the roll and catalogue of sin increasing ; he hath a distinct view
of every one, from the sin of Adam to the last, filled up in his omniscience,
and yet gives no order for the arrest of the world. He knows men fitted for
destruction, all the instants he exerciseth long-sufi'ering towards them, which
makes the apostle call it not simply ' long-suffering ' without the addition of
•s-oXX^, ' much long-suffering,' Pk.om. ix. 23. There is not a grain in the
whole mass of sin that he hath not a distinct knowledge of, and of the quality
of it. He perfectly understands the greatness of his own majesty that is
vilified, and the nature of the offence that doth disparage him. He is
solicited by his justice, directed by his omniscience, and armed with judg-
ments to vindicate himself, but his arm is restrained by patience. To con-
clude ; no indignity is hid from him, no iniquity is beloved by him ; the
hatred of their sinfulness is infinite, and the knowledge of their malice is
exact. The subsisting of the world under such weighty provocations, so
numerous, so long time, and with his full sense of every one of them, is an
evidence of such forbearance and long-suffering that the addition of ' riches,'
which the apostle puts to it, Rom. ii. 4, labours with an insufficiency
clearly to display it.

III. Why God doth exercise so much patience.

1. To shew himself appeasable. God did not declare by his patience to
former ages, or any age, that he was appeased with them, or that they were
in his favour, but that he was appeasable, that he was not an implacable
enemy, but that they might find him favourable to them, if they did seek
after him. The continuance of the world by patience, and the bestowing
many mercies by goodness, were not a natural revelation of the manner how
he would be appeased ; that was made known only by the prophets, and
after the coming of Christ by the apostles, and had indeed been intelligible
in some sort to the whole world, had there been a faithfulness in Adam's
posterity to transmit the tradition of the first promise to succeeding gene-
rations. Had not the knowledge of that died by their carelessness and
neglect, it had been easy to tell the reason of God's patience to be in order
to the exhibition of the seed of the woman, to bruise the serpent's head.

They could not but naturally know themselves sinners, and worthy of
death ; they might, by easy reflections upon themselves, collect that they
were not in that comely and harmonious posture now, as they were when
God first wrought them with his own finger, and placed them as his lieu-
tenants in the world ; they knew they did grievously offend him, this they
were taught by the sprinklings of his judgments among them sometimes.
And since he did not utterly root up mankind, his sparing patience was a
prologue of some further favours, or pardoning grace, to be displayed to the
world by some methods of God yet unknown to them. Though the earth
was something impaired by the curse after the fall, yet the main pillars of it
stood ; the state of the natui'al motions of the creature was not changed : the
heavens remained in the same posture wherein they were created ; the sun,
and moon, and other heavenly bodies continued their usefulness and refresh-
ing influences to man : ' The heavens did still declare the glory of God ; day
unto day did utter speech ; their line is gone throughout all the earth, and
their words to the end of the world,' Ps. xix. 1-4 ; which declared God to
be willing to do good to his creatures, and were as so many legible letters

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 525

or rudiments, whereby ihej might read his patience, and that a further
design of favour to the world lay hid in that patience. Paul applies this to
the preaching of the gospel : Rom. x. 18, ' Have they not heard the word of
God ■? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto
the end of the world.' Redeeming grace could not be spelled out by them
in a clear notion ; but yet they did declare that which is the foundation of
gospel mercy. Were not God patient, there were no room for a gospel mercy,
so that the heavens declare the gospel, not formally but fundamentally, in de-
claring the long-sutfering of God, without which no gospel had been framed, or
could have been expected. They could not but read in those things favour-
able inclinations towards them. And though they could not be ignorant,
that they deserved a mark of justice, yet seeing themselves supported by
God, and beholding the regular motions of the heavens from day to day,
and the revolutions of the seasons of the year, the natural conclusion they
might draw from thence was, that God was placable, since he behaved him-
self more as a tender friend, that had no mind to be at war with them,
than an enraged enemy. The good things which he gave them, and the
patience whereby he spared them, were no arguments of an implacable dis-
position, and therefore of a disposition willing to be appeased. This is
clearly the design of the apostle's arguing with the Lystrians, when they
would have offered sacrifices to Paul, Acts xiv. 17. When ' God suffered all
nations to walk in their own ways, he did not leave himself without witness,
giving rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons.' What were those witnesses
of ? Not only of the being of a God, by their readiness to sacrifice to those
that were not gods, only supposed to be so in their false imaginations, but
witnesses to the tenderness of God, that he had no mind to be severe with
his creatures, but would allure them by ways of goodness. Had not God's
patience tended to this end, to bring the world under another dispensation,
the apostle's arguing from it had not been suitable to his design, which
seems to be a hindering the sacrifices they intended for them, and a drawing
them to embrace the gospel, and therefore preparing the way to it, by speak-
ing of the patience and goodness of God to them, as an unquestionable
testimony of the reconcilableness of God to them, by some sacrifice which
was represented under the common notion of sacrifices.* These things were
not witnesses of Christ, or syllables whereby they could spell out the re-
deeming person, but witnesses that God was placable in his own nature.
When man abused those noble faculties God had given him, and diverted
them from the use and service God intended them for, God might have
stripped man of them, the first time that he misemployed them ; and it
would have seemed most agreeable to his wisdom and justice, not to suflfer
himself to be abused, and the world to go contrary to its natural end. But
since he did not level the world with its first nothing, but healed the world
60 favourably, it was evident that his patience pointed the world to a further
design of mercy and goodness in him. To imagine that God had no other
design in his long-suffering but that of vengeance, had been a notion unsuit-
able to the goodness and wisdom of God. He would never have pretended
himself to be a firiend, if he had harboured nothing but enmity in his heart
against them.

It had been far from his goodness, to give them a cause to suspect such
a design in him, as his patience certainly did, had he not intended it. Had
he preserved men only for punishment, it is more hke he would have treated
men as princes do those they reserve for the axe, or halter, give them only
things necessary to uphold their lives till the day of execution, and not have
* Amyrald, Dissert, p. 191, 192.

526 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

bestowed upon them so many good things, to make their lives delightful to
them, nor have furnished them with so many excellent means to please
their senses and recreate their minds ; it had been a mocking of them to
treat them at that rate, if nothing but punishment had been intended towards
them. If the end of it, to lead men to repentance, were easily intelligible by
them, as the apostle intimates (Rom. ii. 4, which is to be linked with the
former chapter, a discourse of the Gentiles ; ' Not knowing,' saith he, ' that
the riches of his forbearance and goodness leads thee to repentance'), it also
gives them some ground to hope for pardon. For what other argument can
more induce to repentance, than an expectation of mercy upon a relenting
and acknowledging the crime ? Without a design of pardoning grace, his
patience would have been in great measure exercised in vain ; for by mere
patience God is not reconciled to a sinner, no more than a prince to a rebel
by bearing with him. Nor can a sinner conclude himself in the favour of
God, no more than a rebel can conclude himself in the favour of his
prince ; only this he may conclude, that there is some hopes he may have
the grant of a pardon, since he hath time to sae it out. And so much
did the patience of God naturally signify, that he was of a reconcilable
temper, and was willing men should sue out their pardon upon repentance ;
otherwise he might have magnified his justice, and condemned men by the
law of works.

2. He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for men's repentance.
All the notices and warnings that God gives men, of either public or per-
sonal calamities, is a continual invitation to repentance. This was the
common interpretation the heathens made of extraordinary presages and
prodigies, which shewed as well the delays as the approaches of judgments.
What other notion but this, that those warnings of judgments witness a
slowness to anger, and a willingness to turn his arrows another way, should
move them to multiply sacrifices, go weeping to their temples, sound out
prayers to their gods, and shew all those other testimonies of a repentance
which their blind understandings hit upon ? If a prince should sometimes
in a light and gentle manner punish a criminal, and then relax it and shew
him much kindness, and afterwards inflict upon him another kind of punish-
ment as hght as the former, and less than was due to his crime, what could-
the malefactor suspect by such a way of proceeding, but that the prince, by
those gently repeated chastisements, had a mind to move him to a regret
for his crime ? And what other thoughts could men naturally have of
God's conduct, that he should warn them of great judgments, send light
afilictions, which are testimonies rather of a patience than of a severe wrath,
but that it was intended to move them to a relenting, and a breaking off
their sins by working righteousness ? Though divine patience doth not in
the event induce men to repentance, yet the natural tendency of such a
treatment is to mollify men's hearts, to overcome their obstinacy, and no
man hath any reason to judge otherwise of such a proceeding. ' The long-
sufiering of God is salvation,' saith Peter, 2 Peter iii. 15 ; i. e. hath a ten-
dency to salvation, in its being a solicitation of men to the means of it ; for
the apostle cites Paul for the confirmation of it, ' Even as our beloved Paul
hath written unto you,' which must refer to Rom. ii. 4, ' It leads to repent-
ance ; ' "Ayn, it conducts, which is more than barely to invite ; it doth, as
it were, take us by the hand, and point us to the way wherein we should go ;
and for this end it was exercised not only towards the Jews, but towards the
Gentiles ; not only those that are within the pale of the church, and under
the dews of the gospel, but to those that are in darkness and in the shadow
of death. For this discourse of the apostle was but an inference from what

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 527

he had treated of in the first chapter, concerning the idolatry and ingratitude
of the Gentiles. Since the Gentiles were to be punished for the abuse of it
as well as the Jews, as he intimates, ver. 9, it is plain that his patience,
which is exercised towards the idolatrous Gentiles, was to allure them to
repentance as well as others ; and it was a sufficient motive in itself to per-
suade them to a change of their vile and gross acts, to such as were morally
good. And there was enough in God's dealing with them, and in that light they
had, to engage them to a better course than what they usually walked in.
And though men do abuse God's long-suffering, to encourage their impeni-
tence, and persisting in their crimes, yet that they cannot reasonably ima-
gine that to be the end of God, is evident ; their own gripes of conscience
would acquaint them that it is otherwise. They know that conscience is a
principle that God hath given them, as well as understanding, and will, and
other faculties ; that God doth not approve of that which the voice of their
own consciences, and of the consciences of all men under natural light, are
utterly against. And if there were really in this forbearance of God an
approbation of men's crimes, conscience could not frequently and universally
in all men check them for them. What authority could conscience have to
do it? But this it doth in all men. As the apostle, Kom. i. 22, ' Thev
know the judgment of God, that those that do such things' — which he had
mentioned before — ' are worthy of death.' In this thing the consciences of
all men cannot err. They could not therefore conclude from hence God's
approbation of their iniquities, but his desire that their hearts should be
touched with a repentance for them.

The ' sin of Ephraim is hid,' Hosea xiii. 12, 13 ; i. e, God doth not pre-
sently take notice of it to order punishment ; he lays it in a secret place
from the eye of his justice, that Ephraim might not be his unwise son, and
' stay long in the place of breaking forth of children ;' i. e. that he should
speedily reclaim himself, and not continue in the way of destruction. God
hath no need to abuse any, he doth not lie to the sons of men ; if he would
have men perish, he could easily destroy them, and have done it lon^ a^o.
He did not leave the woman Jezebel in being, nor lengthened out her time but
as a space to repent. Rev. ii. 21, that she might reflect upon her wavs, and
devote herself seriously to his service and her own hapi^iness. His patience
stands between the otf'ending creatui-e and eternal misery a long time, that
men might not foolishly throw away their souls, and be damned for their
impenitency ; by this he shews himself ready to receive men to mercy upon
their return. To what purpose doth he invite men to repentance, if he in-
tended to receive* them, and damn them after they repent ?

3. He doth exercise patience for the propagation of mankind. If God
punished every sin presently, there would not only be a period put to
churches, but to the world ; without patience, Adam had sunk into eternal
anguish the first moment of his provocation, and the whole world of man-
kind in his loins had perished with him, and never seen the light. If this
perfection had not interposed after the first sin, God had lost h"is end in the
creation of the world, which he * created not in vain, but formed it to be
inhabited,' Isa. xlv. 18. It had been inconsistent with the wisdom of God
to make a world to be inhabited, and destroy it upon sin, when it had but
two principal inhabitants in it ; the reason of his making the eartli had been
insignificant ; he had not had any upon earth to glorify him, without erect-
ing another world, which might have proved as sinful, and as quickly
wicked as this. God should have always been pulling down and rearing up,
creating and annihilating; one world would have come after another, as
* Qu. ' deceive ' ? — Ed.

528 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

wave after wave in the sea. His patience stepped in to support the honour
of God and the continuance of men, without which, one had been in part
impaired, and the other totally lost.

4. He doth exercise patience for the continuance of the church. If he be
not patient towards sinners, what stock would there be for believers to spring
up from ? He bears with the provoking carriage of men, evil men ; because
out of their loins he intends to extract others, which he will form for the
glory of his grace. He hath some unborn, that belong to the ' election of
grace,' which are to be the seed of the worst of men. Jeroboam, the chief
incendiary of the Israelites to idolatry, had an Abijah, in whom was found
* some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel,' 1 Kings xiv. 13. Had
Ahaz been snapped in the first act of his wickedness, the Israelites had
wanted so good a prince, and so good a man as Hezekiah, a branch of that
wicked predecessor. What gardener cuts off the thorns from the rose-bush
till he hath gathered the roses ? And men do not use to burn all the crab
tree, but preserve a stock to engraft some sweet fruit upon. There could
not have been a saint on earth, nor consequently in heaven, had it not been
for this perfection. He did not destroy the Israehtes in the wilderness, that
he miffht keep up a church among them, and not extinguish the whole seed
that w'ere heirs of the promises and covenant made with Abraham. Had God
punished men for their sins as soon as they had been committed, none would
have lived to have been better, none could have continued in the world to
honour him by their virtues ! Manasseh had never been a convert, and many
brutish men had never been changed from beasts to angels, to praise and
acknowledge their Creator. Had Peter received his due recompence upon
the denial of his Master, he had never been a martyr for him ; nor had Paul
been a preacher of the gospel, nor any else ; and so the gospel had not shined
in any part of the world. No seed would have been brought in to Christ ;
Christ is beholding immediately to this attribute for all the seed he hath in
the world. It is ' for his name's sake' that he doth ' defer his anger,' and
for his 'praise' that he doth refrain from 'cutting us off,' Isa. xlviii. 9.
And in the next chapter follows a prophecy of Christ. To overthrow man-
kind for sin, were to prevent the spreading a church in the world. A woman
that is guilty of a capital crime, and lies under a condemning sentence, is
reprieved from execution for her being with child. It is for the child's sake
the woman is respited, not for her own ; it is for the elect's sake in the loins
of transgressors, that they are a long time spared, and not for their own : Isa.
Ixv. 8, 9, ' As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy
it not ; for a blessing is in it : so will I do for my servants' sake, that I
may not destroy them all ; as a husbandman spares a vine for some good
clusters in it.' He had spoke of vengeance before, yet he would reserve
some, from whom he would bring forth those that should be inheritors of
his mountains ; that he might make up his church of Judea, Jerusalem
being a mountainous place, and the type of the church in all ages. What
is the reason he doth not level his thunder at the heads of those for whose
destruction he receives so many petitions from ' the souls under the altar ' ?
Eev. vi. 9, 10. Because God had others to write a testimony for him in
their own blood, and perhaps out of the loins of those for whom vengeance
was so earnestly suppHcated. And God, as the master of a vessel, lies
patiently at anchor till the last passenger he expects be taken in.*

5. For the sake of his church, he is patient to wicked men. The tares are
patiently endured till the harvest, for fear in the plucking up the one there
mi»ht be some prejudice done to the other. Upon this account he spares

* Smith on Creed, p. 404.

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 529

some who are worse than others, whom he cnisheth by signal judgments.
The Jews had committed sins worse than Sodom, for the confirmation of
which we have God's oath, Ezek. xvi. 48 ; and more by half than Samaria
or the ten tribes had done, ver. 51 ; yet God spared the Jews, though he
destroyed the SoJomites. What was the reason, but a large remnant of
righteous persons, more clusters of good grapes, were found among them than
grew in Sodom ? Isa. i. 9. A few more righteous in Sodom had damped the
fire and brimstone designed for that place, and a remnant of such in Judea
was a bar to that fierceness of anger which otherwise would have quickly
consumed them. Had there been but ten righteous in Sodom, divine
patience had still bound the arms of justice, that it should not have prepared
its brimstone, notwithstanding the clamour of the sins of the multitude.
Judea was ripe for the sickle, but God would put a lock upon the torrent of
his judgments, that they should not flow down upon that wicked place, to
make them a desolation and a curse, as long as tender-hearted Josiah lived,
who had humbled himself at the threatening, and wept before the Lord,
1 Kings xxii. 19, 20, Sometimes he bears with wicked men, that they
might exercise the patience of the saints. Rev. xiv. 12. The Avhole time of
the forbearance of antichrist in all his intrusions into the temple of God,
invasions of the rights of God, usurpations of the office of Christ, and be-
smearing himself with the blood of the saints, was to give them an oppor-
tunity of patience. God is patient towards the wicked, that by their means
he might try the righteous. He burns not the wisp till he hath scoured
his vessels, nor lays by the hammer till he hath formed some of his matter
into an excellent fashion. He useth the worst men as rods to correct his
people, before he sweeps the twigs out of his house. God sometimes uses
the thorns of the world as a hedge to secure his church, sometimes as instru-
ments to ti-y and exercise it. Howsoever he useth them, whether for security
or trial, he is patient to them for his church's advantage.

6. When men are not brought to repentance by his patience, he doth
longer exercise it to manifest the equity of his future justice upon them. As
wisdom is justified by her obedient children, so is justice justified by the
rebels against patience ; the contempt of the latter is the justification of the
former. The apostles were * unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that
perish,' as well as in them that were saved by the acceptation of their mes-
sage, 2 Cor. ii. 15. Both are fragrant to God: his mercy is glorified by the
ones' acceptance of it, and his justice freed from any charge against it by the
others' refusal. The cause of men's ruin cannot be laid upon God, who pro-
vided means for their salvation, and solicited their compliance with him.
What reason can they have to charge the Judge with any wrong to them,
who reject the tenders he makes, and who hath forborne them with so much
patience, when he might have censured them by his righteous justice, upon
the first crime they committed, or the first refusal of his gracious ofi'ers ?
Quanta Dei marjis judicium tardum est, tanto niagis justum* After the
despising of patience, there can be no suspicion of an irregularity in the acts
of justice. Man hath no reason to fall foul in his charge upon God, if he
were punished for his own sin, considering the dignity of the injured person,
and the meanness of himself the offender ; but his wrath is more justified
when it is poured out upon those whom he hath endured with much long-
suffering. There is no plea against the shooting of his arrows into those for
whom this voice hath been loud, and his arms open for their return. As
patience, while it is exercised, is the silence of his justice, so when it is
abused, it silenceth men's complaints against his justice. The * riches of
* Minuc. Felix, page 41.

VOL. n. L 1

530 chaknock's woeks. [Nahum I. 3.

his forbearance' made -way for the manifesting the ' treasures of his wrath.'
If God did but a Httle bear with the insolencies of men, and cut them off
after two or three sins, he would not have opportunity to shew either the
power of his patience, or that of his wrath ; but when he hath a right to
punish for one sin, and yet bears with them for many, and they will not be
reclaimed, the sinner is more inexcusable, divine justice less chargeable, and
his wrath more powerful : Rom. ix. 22, ' What if God, willing to shew his
wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the
vessels of wrath fitted for destniction.' The proper and immediate end of
his long-suffering is to lead men to repentance ; but after they have, by their
obstinacy, fitted themselves for destruction, he bears longer with them, to
magnify his wrath more upon them, and if it is not the finis opercmtis, it is
at least the finis opcris, where patience is abused. Men are apt to complain
of God that he deals hardly with them. The Israelites seem to charge God
with too much severity, to cast them off, when so many promises were made
to the fathers for their perpetuity and preservation, which is intimrited,
Hos. ii. 2, * Plead with your mother, plead ;' by the double repetition of the
word plead ; do not accuse me of being false, or too rigorous, but accuse your
mother, your church, your magistracy, your ministry, for their spiritual for-
nications which have provoked me ; for their n^SJIBl^il intimating the great-
ness of their sins by the reduplication of the word, ' lest I strip her naked.'
I have borne with her under many provocations, and I have not yet taken
away all her ornaments, or said to her according to the rule of divorce, res
tiias tihi haheto. God answers their impudent charge, ' She is not my wife,
nor am I her husband.' He doth not say first, I am not her husband, but
she is not my wife : she first withdi-ew from her duty, by breaking the mar-
riage-covenant, and then I ceased to be her husband. No man shall be
condemned, but he shall be convinced of the due desert of his sin, and the
justice of God's proceeding. God will lay open men's guilt, and repeat the
measures of his patience, to justify the severity of his wrath : Hosea vii. 10,
' Sins will testify to their face.' What is in its own nature a preparation
for glory, men by their obstinacy make a preparation for a more indisputable
punishment. We see many evidences of God's forbearance here, in sparing
men under those blasphemies which are audible, and those profane carriages
which are visible, which would sufliciently justify an act of severity ; yet
when men's secret sins, both in heart and action, and the vast multitude of
them, far surmounting what can arrive to our knowledge here, shall be dis-
covered, how great a lustre will it add to God's bearing with them, and make
his justice triumph without any reasonable demm- from the sinner himself!
He is long-suffering here, that his justice may be more public hereafter.

IV. The use.

Use 1. For instruction.

1. How is this patience of God abused ! The Gentiles abused those tes-
timonies of it, which were written in showers and fruitful seasons. No
nation was ever stripped of it, under the most provoking idolatries, till after
multiplied spurns at it. Not a person among us but hath been guilty of the
abuse of it. How have we contemned that which demands a reverence from
us ! How have we requited God's waitings with rebellions, while he hath
continued urging and expecting our return ! Saul relented at David's for-
bearing to revenge himself, when he had his prosecuting and industrious
enemy in his power : 1 Sam. xxiv. 17, ' Thou art more righteous than I ;
thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.' And shall
we not relent at God's wonderful long-suffering, and silencing his auger so

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 531

much •? He could puff away our lives, but lie will not, and yet we endeavour
to strip bim of bis being, tbougb we cannot.

(1.) Let us consider tbe ways how slowness to anger is abused.

[l.J It is abused by misinterpretations of it, when men slander bis
patience, to be only a carelessness and neglect of bis providence ; as
Averroes argued from bis slowness to anger, a total neglect of tbe govern-
ment of tbe lower world ; or when men, from bis long-suffering, cbarge bim
witb impurity, as if bis patience were a consent to tbeir crimes ; and because
be suffered tbem, witbout calling tbem to account, be were one of tbeir par-
tisans, and as wicked as tbemselves : Ps. 1. 21, ' Because I kept silence,
thou thoughtest I was altogether such a one as thyself.' His silence makes
them conclude him to be an abettor of, and a consort in, their sins, and think
bim more pleased witb their iniquity than their obedience. Or when they
will infer fi-om bis forbearance a want of his omniscience ; because he suffers
their sins, they imagine be forgets tbem, — Ps. x. 11, ' He bath said in bis
heart, God hath forgotten,' — thinking his patience proceeds not from the
sweetness of his nature, but a weakness of bis mind. How base is it, instead
of admiring him, to disparage him for it ; and because be stands in so advan-
tageous a posture towards us, not to own the choicest prerogatives of bis
deity "? This is to make a perfection so useful to us, to shadow and extin-
guish those others, which are the prime flowers of the crown.

[2.] His patience is abused by continuing in a course of sin under the
influences of it. How much is it the practical language of men. Come, let
us commit this or that iniquity, since divine patience hath suflered worse
than this at our hands ! Nothing is remitted to tbeir sensual pleasures and
eagerness in tbem. How often did tbe Israelites repeat their murmurings
against him, as if they would put his patience to the utmost proof, and see
bow far tbe line of it could extend ? They were no sooner satisfied in one
thing but they quarrelled with bim about another, as if he bad no other
attribute to put in motion against tbem. They tempted him as often as he
relieved tbem, as though the declaration of his name to Moses, Exod. xxxiv.
to be ' a God gracious and long-suflering ' bad been intended for no other
purpose but a protection of them in their rebellions. Such a sort of men
the prophet speaks of, that were ' settled in their lees,' or dregs, Zepb. i. 12.
They were congealed and frozen in their successful wickedness ; such an
abuse of divine patience is tbe very dregs of sin, God chargeth it highly upon
the Jews, Isa. Ivii. 11, ' I have held my peace, even of old, and thou fearest
me not,' my silence made thee confident, yea, impudent in thy sin.

[3.] His patience is abused by repeating sin, after God bath, by an act
of bis patience, taken ofi' some affliction from men. As metals melted in the
fire remain fluid under the operations of the flames, yet when removed from
the fire they quickly return to their former hardness, and sometimes grow harder
than they were before, so men who, in tbeir afflictions, seem to be melted,
like Ahab confess tbeir sins, lie prostrate before God, and seek nim early, yet
if they be brought from under the power of their afflictions, they return to
tbeir old nature, and are as stiff" against God, and resist the blows of the
Spirit as much as they did before. They think they have a new stock of
patience to sin upon. Pharaoh was somewhat thawed under judgments,
and frozen again under forbearance, Exod. ix. 27, 34. Many will howl when
God strikes tbem, and laugh at bim when he forbears them. Thus that
patience which should melt us doth often harden us, which is not an effect
natural to his patience, but natural to our abusing corruption.

[4.] His patience is abused, by taking encouragement from it, to mount
to greater degrees of sin. Because God is slow to anger, men are more fierce

532 chaenock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

in sin, and not only continue in their old rebellions, but heap new upon them.
If he spare them for * three transgressions ' they will commit ' four,' as is
intimated in the first and second of Amos : ' Men's hearts are fully set in
them to do evil, because sentence against an evil work is not speedily
executed,' Eccles. viii. 11. Their hearts are more desperately bent ; before,
they had some waverings and pull-backs, but after a fair sunshine of divine
patience, they entertain more unbridled resolutions, and pass forward with
more liberty and licentiousness. They make his long-suffering subservient
to turn out all those little relentings and regrets they had before, and banish
all thoughts of barring out a temptation. No encouragement is given to men
by God's patience, but they force it by their presumption. They invert God's
order, and bind themselves stronger to iniquity by that which should bind
them faster to their duty. A happy escape at sea makes men go more con-
fidently into the deep afterward. Thus we deal with God as debtors do with
good-natured creditors ; because they do not dun them for what they owe,
they take encouragement to run more upon the score, till their sum amounts
above their ability of payment.

But let it be considered,

(1.) That this abuse of patience is a high sin. As every act of forbearance
obligeth us to duty, so every act of it abused increaseth our guilt. The more
frequent its solicitations of us have been, the deeper aggravations our sin
receives by it. Every sin, after an act of divine patience, contracts a blacker
guilt. The sparing us after the last sin we committed was a superadded act
of long-suffering, and a laying out more of his riches upon us ; and therefore
every new act committed is a despite against greater riches expended, and
greater cost upon us, and against his preserving us from the hand of justice
for the last transgression. It is disingenuous not to have a due resentment
of so much goodness, and base to injure him the more, because he doth not
right himself. Shall he receive the more wrongs from us, by how much the
sweeter he is to us ? No man's conscience but will tell him it is vile to
prefer the satisfaction of a sordid lust, before the counsel of a God of so
gracious a disposition. The sweeter the nature, the fouler is the injury that
is done unto it.

(2.) It is dangerous to abuse his patience. Contempt of kindness is most
irksome to an ingenuous spirit, and he is worthy to have the arrows of God's
indignation lodged in his heart, who despiseth the riches of his long-suffer-
ing. For,

[l.J The time of patience will have an end. Though his spirit strives
with man, yet it ' shall not always strive,' Gen. vi. 3. Though there be a
time wherein Jerusalem might ' know the things that concerned her peace,'
yet there is another period wherein they should be ' hid from their eyes ' :
Luke xix. 43, ' Oh that thou hadst known in this thy day.' Nations have
their day, and persons have their day, and the day of most persons is shorter
than the day of nations. Jerusalem had her day of forty years, but how
many particular persons were taken off before the last or middle hours of that
day were arrived ? Forty years was God grieved with the generation of the
Israelites, Heb. iii. 11. One carcase dropped after another in that limited
time, and at the end not a man but fell under the judicial stroke, except
Caleb and Joshua. One hundred and twenty years was the term set to the
mass of the old world, but not to every man in the old world ; some fell
while the ark was preparing, as well as the whole stock when the ark was
completed. Though he be patient with most, yet he is not in the same
degree with all ; every sinner hath his time of sinning, beyond which he shall
proceed no further, be his lusts never so impetuous, and his affections never

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 533

so imperious. The time of his patience is in Scripture set forth sometimes
by years : three years he came to find fruit on the fig-tree ; sometimes by
days, some men's sins are sooner ripe, and fall. There is a measure of sin,
Jer. li. 18, which is set forth by the ephah, Zech. v. 8, which, when it
is filled, is sealed up, and a weight of lead cast upon the mouth of it. When
judgments are preparing, once and twice the Lord is prevailed with by the
intercession of the prophet. The prepared grasshoppers are not sent to
devour, and the kindled fire is not blown up to consume, Amos vii. from
ver. 1 to ver. 8. But at last God takes the plumb-line to suit and measure
punishment to their sin, and would not pass by them any more, and when
their sin was ripe, represented by a ' basket of summer fruit,' God would
withhold his hand no longer, but brought such a day upon them, wherein
the ' songs of the temple should be bowlings, and dead bodies be in every
place,' chap. viii. 2, 3. He lays by any further thoughts of patience, to
speed their ruin. God had borne long with the Israelites, and long it was
before he gave them up. He would first * break the bow in Jezreel,' Hos.
i. 5, take away the strength of the nation by the death of Zechariah, the last
of Jehu's race, which introduced civil dissensions and ambitious murders
for the throne, whereby in weakening one part they weakened the whole ; or,
as some think, alluding to Tiglath-Pileser, who carried captive two tribes and
a half. If this would not reclaim them, then follows ' Lo-ruhamah, I will not
have mercy,' I will sweep them out of the land, ver. 6; if they did not repent
they should be Lo-ammi, ver. 9, 'You are not my people,' and 'I will not
be your God.' They should be discovenanted, and stripped of all federal
relation. Here patience for ever withdrew from them, and wrathful anger
took its place ; and for particular persons the time of life, whether shorter
or longer, is the only time of longsuffering. It hath no other stage than the
present state of things to act upon. There is none else to be expected after
but giving account of what hath been done in the body, not of anything done
after the soul is fled from the body. The time of patience ends with the first
moment of the soul's departure from the body. This time only is ' the day of
salvation,' i. e. the day wherein God offers it, and the day wherein God waits
for our acceptance of it. It^is at his pleasure to shorteii or lengthen our day,
not at ours. It is not our longsuffering, but his ; he hath the command of it.
[2.] God hath wrath to punish, as well as patience to bear. He hath a
fury to revenge the outrages done to his meekness ; when his messages of
peace, sent to reclaim men, are slighted, his sword shall be whetted, and his
instruments of war prepared : Hos. v. 8, ' Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah,
and the trumpet in Ramah.' As he deals gently like a father, so he can
punish capitally as a judge. Though he holds bis peace for a long time, yet
at last he will go forth Uke a mighty man, and stir up jealousy as a man of
war, to cut in pieces his enemies. It is not said, he hath no anger, but that
he is slow to anger, but sharp in it. He hath a sword to cut, and a bow to
shoot, and arrows to pierce, Ps. xii. 13. Though he be long a-drawing the
one out of its scabbard, and long a-fitting the other to his bow, yet when they
are ready, he strikes home and hits the mark. Though he hath a * time of
patience,' yet he hath also a • day of rebuke,' Hos. v. 9. Though patience
overrules justice by suspending it, yet justice will at last overrule patience
by an utter silencing it. God is Judge of the whole earth to right men, yet
he is no less Judge of the injuries he receives to right himself. Though God
a while was pressed with the murmurings of the Israelites, after their com-
ing out of Egypt, and seemed desirous to give them all satisfaction upon
their unworthy complaints, yet when they came to open hostility, in setting a
golden calf in his throne, ho commissions the Levites to ' kill every man his

534 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

brother and companion in the camp,' Exod. xxxii, 27 ; and how desirous
soever he was to content them before, they never murmured afterwards, but
they severely smarted for it. When once he hath begun to use his sword,
he sticks it up naked, that it might be ready for use upon every occasion.
Though he hath feet of lead, yet he hath hands of iron. It was long that
he supported the peevishness of the Jews, but at last he captived them by
the arms of the Babylonians, and laid them waste by the power of the
Eomans. He planted by the apostles churches in the East, and when his
goodness and long-suffering prevailed not with them, he tore them up by the
roots. What Christians are to be found in those once famous parts of Asia,
but what are overgrown with much error and ignorance ?

[3.] The more his patience is abused, the sharper will be the wrath he in-
flicts. As his wrath restrained makes his patience long, so his compassions
restrained, will make his wrath severe. As he doth transcend all creatures
in the measures of the one, so he transcends all creatures in the sharpness
of the other. Christ is described with ' feet of brass,' as if they burned in
a furnace, Kev. i. 15, slow to move, but heavy to crush, and hot to burn.
His wrath loseth nothing by delay ; it grows the fresher by sleeping, and
strikes with greater strength when it awakes. All the time men are abusing
his patience, God is whetting his sword, and the longer it is whetting, the
sharper will be the edge. The longer he is fetching his blow, the sharper
it will be. The heavier the cannons are; the more difficultly are they drawn
to the besieged town, but when arrived they recompense the slowness of
their march by the fierceness of their battery : ' Because I have purged thee,'
i. e. used means for thy reformation, and waited for it, ' and thou wast not
purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more, till I have
caused my fury to rest upon thee. I will not go back, neither will I spare ;
according to thy ways, and according to thy doings shall they judge thee,'
Ezek. xxiv. 13, 14. God will spare as little then, a? he spared much before.
His wrath shall be as raging upon them, as the sea of their wickedness was
within them. When there is a bank to forbid the irruption of the streams,
the waters swell, but when the bank is broke, or the lock taken away, they
rush with the greater violence, and ravage more than they would have done,
had they not met with a stop. The longer a stone is a-falling, the more it
bruiseth, and grinds to powder. There is a greater treasure of wrath laid up
by the abuses of patience. Every sin must have a 'just recompence of re-
ward,' and therefore every sin, in regard of its aggravations, must be more
punished, than a sign* in the singleness and simplicity of its own nature.
As treasures of mercy are kept by God for us, — ' he keeps mercy for thou-
sands,'— so are treasures of wrath kept by him, to be expended ; and a time
of expense there must be ; patience will account to justice all the good offices
it hath done the sinner, and demand to be righted by justice. Justice will
take the account from the hands of patience, and exact a recompence for every
disingenuous injury oifered to it. When justice comes to arrest men for their
debts, patience, mercy, and goodnesss, will step in as creditors, and clap their
actions upon them, which will make the condition so much more deplorable.

[4.] When he puts an end to his abused patience, his wrath will make
quick and sure work. He that is slow to anger, will be swift in the execu-
tion of it. The departure of God from Jerusalem is described with wings
and wheels, Ezek. xi. 28. One stroke of his hand is irresistible; he that
hath spent so much time in waiting, needs but one minute to ruin ; though
it be long ere he draws his sword out of his scabbard, yet when once he doth
it, he despatcheth men at a blow. Ephraim, or the ten tribes, had a long
* Qu. 'sin'?— Ed.

Nahuji I. 3.] god's patience. 535

time of patience and prosperity, but ' now shall a month devour him with his
portion,' Hosea v, 7. One fatal month puts a period to the many years'
peace and security of a sinful nation. His arrows wound suddenly, Ps. Ixiv.
7, and, while men are about to fill their bellies, he casts the fruits of his
wrath upon them, Job. xx. 28, like thunder out of a cloud, or a bullet out
of a cannon, that strikes dead before it is heard. God deals with sinners as
enemies do with a town, batter it not by planted guns, but secretly under-
mines and blows up the walls, whereby they involve the garrison in a sudden
ruin, and carry the town. God spared the Amalekites a long time after the
injury committed against the Israelites in their passage out of Egypt to
Canaan, but when he came to reckon with them, he would waste them in a
trice, and ' make an utter consumption of them,' 1 Sam. xv. 2, 3. He de-
scribes himself by a travailing woman, Isa. xlii. 14, that hath borne long in
her womb, and at last sends forth her birth with strong cries. Though he
hath held his peace, been still and restrained himself, yet at last he will de-
stroy and devour at once. The Ninevites, spared in the time of Jonah for
their repentance, are in nature threatened with a certain and total ruin, when
God should come to bring them to an account for his length and patience,
so much abused by them. Though God endured the murmuring Israelites
so long in the wilderness, yet he paid them off at last, and took away the
rebels in his wrath. He uttered their sentence with an irreversible oath,
that none of them should enter into his rest, and he did as surely execute it
as he had solemnly sworn it.

[5.] Though he doth defer his visible wrath, yet that very delay may be
more dreadful than a quick punishment. He may forbear striking, and give
the reins to the hardness and corruption of men's hearts. He may suffer
them to walk in their own counsels, without any more striving with them,
whereby they make themselves fitter fuel for his vengeance. This was the
fate of Israel ; when they would not hearken to his voice, ' he gave them up
to their own hearts' lusts, and they walked in their own counsels,' Ps. Ixxxi.
12. Though his sparing them had the outward aspect of patience, it was
a wrathful one, and attended with spiritual judgments. Thus many abusers
of patience may still have their line lengthened, and the candle of pros-
perity to shine upon their heads, that they may increase their sins, and be
the fitter mark at last for his arrows. They swim down the stream of their
own sensuality with a deplorable security, till they fall into an unavoidable
gulf, where at last it will be a great part of their hell to reflect on the length
of divine patience on earth, and their inexcusable abuse of it.

(2.) It informs us of the reason why he lets the enemies of his church
oppress it, and defers his promise of the deliverance of it. If he did punish
them presently, his holiness and justice would be glorified, but his power
over himself in his patience would be obscured. Well may the church be
content to have a perfection of God glorified, that is not like to receive any
honour in another world by any exercise of itself. If it were not for this
patience, he were imcapable to be the governor of a sinful world. He might,
without it, be the governor of an innocent world, but not of a criminal one.
He would be the destroj'er of the world, but not the orderer and disposer of
the extravagances and sinfulness of the world. The interest of his wisdom
in drawing good out of evil would not be served, if he were not clothed with
this perfection as well as with others. If he did presently destroy the
enemies of his church upon the first oppression, his wisdom in contriving,
and his power in accomplishing deliverance against the united powers of hell
and earth would not be visible ; no, nor that power in preserving his people
unconsumed in the furnace of affliction. He had not got so great a name

^36 ■■ chaenock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

in the rescue of Ms Israel from Pharaoh, had he thundered the tyrant into
destruction upon his first edicts against the innocent. If he were not patient
to the most violent of men, he might seem to be cruel ; but when he offers
peace to them under their rebellions, waits that they may be members of
his church rather than enemies to it, he frees himself from any such imputa-
tion even in the judgment of those that shall feel most of his wrath. It is
this renders the equity of his justice unquestionable, and the deliverance of
his people righteous in the judgment of those from whose fetters they are
delivered. Christ ' reigns in the midst of his enemies,' to shew his power
over himself as well as over the heads of his enemies, to shew his power over
his rebels. And though he retards his promise, and suffers a great interval
of time between the publication and performance ; sometimes years, some-
times ages to pass away, and little appearance of any preparation to shew
himself a God of truth ; it is not that he hath forgotten his word, or repents
that ever he passed it, or sleeps in a supine neglect of it ; but that men
might not perish, but bethink themselves, and come as friends into his
bosom, rather than be crushed as enemies under his feet : 2 Pet. iii. 9,

* The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, but is long-suffering to us-
ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repent-
ance.' Hereby he shews that he would be rather pleased with the conver-
sion than the destruction of men.

(3.) We see the reason why sin is suffered to remain in the regenerate, —
to shew his patience towards his own ; for since this attribute hath no other
place of appearance but in this world, God takes opportunity to manifest it ;
because at the close of the world it will remain closed up in the Deity,
without any further operation. As God suffers a multitude of sins in the
world, to evidence his patience to the wicked, so he suffers great remainders
of sin in his people, to shew his patience to the godly. His sparing mercy
is admirable before their conversion, but more admirable in bearing with
them, after so high an obligation as the conferring upon them special con-
verting grace.

Use 2. The second use is of comfort. It is a vast comfort to any when
God is pacified towards them ; but it is some comfort to all that God is yet
patient towards them, though but very little to a refractory sinner. His
continued patience to all speaks a possibility of the cure of all, would they
not stand against the way of their recovery. It is a terror that God hath
anger, but it is a mitigation of that terror that God is slow to it. While his
sword is in his sheath, there is some hopes to prevent the drawing of it.
Alas ! if he were all fire and sword upon sin, what would become of us ?
We should find nothing else but overflowing deluges, or sweeping pestilences,
or perpetual flashes of Sodom's fire and brimstone from heaven. He dooms
us not presently to execution, but gives us a long breathing-time after the
crime, that by retiring from our iniquities, and having recourse to his mercy,
he may be withheld for ever from signing a warrant against us, and change
his legal sentence into an evangelical pardon. It is a special comfort to his
people that he is a * sanctuary to them,' Ezek. xi. 16, a place of refuge, a
place of spiritual communications ; but it is some refreshment to all in this
life that he is a defence to them, for so is his patience called. Numb. xiv. 9,

* Their defence is departed from them,' speaking to the Israelites, that they
should not be afraid of the Canaanites, for their defence is departed from
them. God is no longer patient to them, since their sins be full and ripe.
Patience, as long as it lasts, is a temporary defence to those that are under
the wing of it ; but to the believer it is a singular comfort. And God is
called the * God of patience and consolation' in one breath: Rom. xv. 5,

Nahuji I. 3,] god's patience. 537

' The God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded,' All
interpreters understand it eflfectively. The God that inspires you with com-
fort, and cheers you with comfort, grant this to you. Why may it not be
understood formally of the patience belonging to the nature of God ? And
though it be expressed in the way of petition, yet it might also be proposed
as a pattern for imitation, and so suits very well to the exhortation laid
down, ver. 1, which was to ' bear with the infirmities of the weak,' which he
presseth them to, ver. 8, * by the example of Christ,' and ver. 5, ' by the
patience of God to them,' and so they are very well linked together. God
of * patience and consolation ' may well be joined, since patience is the first
step of comfort to the poor creature. If it did not administer some com-
fortable hopes to Adam in the interval between his fall and God's coming to
examine him, I am sure it was the first discovery of any comfort to the
creature after the sweeping the destroying deluge out of the world. Gen. ix.
21. After the savour of Noah's sacrifice, representing the great sacrifice
which was to be in the world, had ascended up to God, the return from him
is a publication of his forbearing to punish any more in such a manner ;
and though he found man no better than he was before, and the imagina-
tions of men's hearts as evil as before the deluge, that he would not again
smite every living thing as he had done. This was the first expression of
comfort to Noah after his exit from the ark, and declares nothing else but
the continuance of patience to the new world, above what he had shewn to
the old.

1. It is a comfort in that it is an argument of his grace to his people. If
he hath so rich a patience to exercise towards his enemies, he hath a greater
treasure to bestow upon his friends. Patience is the first attribute which
steps in for our salvation, and therefore called ' salvation,' 2 Peter iii. 15.
Something else is therefore built upon it, and intended by it to those that
believe. Those two letters of his name, • a God keeping mercy for thou-
sands,' and ' forgiving iniquity, transgressions, and sin,' follows the other
letter of his * long-suffering,' in the proclamation, Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. He
is ' slow to anger,' that he may be merciful, that men may seek and receive
their pardon. If he be ' loug-suiFering,' in order to be a pardoning God, he
will not be wanting in pardoning those who answer the design of his forbear-
ance of them. You would not have had sparing mercy to improve if God
would have denied you saving mercy upon the improvement of his sparing
goodness. If he hath so much respect to his enemies that provoke him, as
to endure them with much long-sufl'ering, he will surely be very kind to those
that obey him and conform to his will. If he hath much long-suffering to
those that are fitted for destruction, Kom. ix. 22, he will have a muchness
of mercy for those that are prepared for glory by faith and repentance. It
is but a natural conclusion a gracious soul may make : If God had not a
mind to be appeased towards me, he would not have had a mind to forbear
me; but since he hath forborne me, and given me a heart to see and answer
the true end of that forbearance, I need not question but that sparing mercy
will end in saving, since it finds that repentance springing up in me, which
that patience conducted me to.

2. His patience is a ground to trust in his promise. If his slowness to
anger be so great, when his precept is slighted, his readiness to give what
lie hath promised will be as great, when his promise is believed. If the
provocations of him meet with such an unwillingness to punish them, faith
in him will meet with the choicest embraces from him. He was more ready
to make the promise of redemption after man's apostasy, than to execute the
threatening of the law. He doth still witness a greater willingness to give

538

charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

forth the fruits of the promise than to pour out the vials of his curses. His
slowness to anger is an evidence still that he hath the same disposition,
which is no slight cordial to faith in his word.

_ 3, It is a comfort in infirmities. If he were not patient, he could not hear
with so many peevishnesses and weaknesses in the hearts of his own. If he
be patient to the grosser sins of his enemies, he will be no less to the lighter
infirmities of his people. When the soul is as a bruised reed, that can emit
no sound at all, or one very harsh and ungrateful, he doth not break it in
pieces, and fling it away in disdain, but waits to see whether it will fully
answer his pains, and be brought to a better frame, and sweeter note. He
brings them not to account for every slip, but ' as a father spares his son
that serves him,' Mai. iii. 17. It is a comfort to us in our distracted ser-
vices ; for were it not for this slowness to anger, he would stifle us in the
midst of our prayers, wherein there are as many foolish thoughts to disgust
him, as there are petitions to implore him. The patientest angels would
hardly be able to bear with the follies of good men in acts of worship.

Use 3. The third use is for exhortation.

1. Meditate often on the patience of God. The devil labours for nothing
more than to deface in us the consideration and memory of this perfection.
He is an envious creature, and since it hath reached out itself to us, and
not to him, he envies God the glory of it, and man the advantage of it.
But God loves to have the volumes of it studied, and daily turned over by
us. We cannot without an inexcusable wilfulness miss the thoughts of it,
since it is visible in every bit of bread, and breath of air in ourselves, and all
about us.

(1.) The frequent consideration of his patience would render God highly
amiable to us. It is a more endearing argument than his mere goodness.
His goodness to us as creatures, endowing us with such excellent faculties,
furnishing us with such a comjnodious world, and bestowing upon us so
many attendants for our pleasure and service, and giving us a lordship over
his other works, deserves our affection. But his patience to us as sinners,
after we have merited the greatest wrath, shews him to be of a sweeter dis-
position than creating goodness to unoffending creatures, and consequently
speaks a greater love in him, and bespeaks a greater affection from us.
His creating goodness discovered the majesty of his being, and the greatness
of his mind, but this the sweetness and tenderness of his nature. In this
patience he exceeds the mildness of all creatures to us, and therefore should
be enthroned in our affections above all other creatures. The considera-
tion of this would make us affect him for his nature as well as for his
benefits.

(2.) The consideration of his patience would make us frequent and serious
in the exercise of repentance. In its nature it leads to it, and the conside-
ration of it would engage us to it, and melt us in the exercise of it. Could
we deeply think of it without being touched with a sense of the kindness of
our forbearing creditor and governor ? Could we gaze upon it, nay, could
we glance upon it, without relenting at our offending one of so mild a nature,
without being sensibly affected that he hath preserved us so long from being
loaded with those chains of darkness under which the devils groan ? This
forbearance hath good reason to make sin and sinners ashamed. That yon
are in being is not for want of advantages enough in his hand against you,
many a forfeiture you have made, and many an engagement you have broke;
he hath scarce met with any other dealing from us than what had treachery
in it. Whatsoever our sincerity is, we have no reason to boast of it, when
we consider what mixtures there are in it, and what swarms of base motions

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 539

taint it. Hath he not lain pressed and groaning under our sins, ' as a cart
is pressed with sheaves,' Amos ii. 13, when one shake of himself, as Sam-
son, might have rid him of the burden, and dismissed us in his fury into
hell ? If we should often ask our consciences, Why have we done thus and
thus against so mild a God ? would not the reflection on it put us to the
blush? If men would consider that such a time they provoked God to his
face, and yet have not felt his sword ; such a time they blasphemed him, and
made a reproach of his name, and his thunder did not stop their motion ;
such a time they fell into an abominable brutishness, yet he kept the punish-
ment of devils, the unclean spirits, from reaching them ; such a time he bore
an open aflront from them, when they scoffed at his word, and he did not
send a destruction, and laugh at it : would not such a meditation work some
strange kind of relentings in men ? What if we should consider, that we
cannot do a sinful act without the support of his concurring providence ?
We cannot see, hear, move without his concourse. All creatures we use
for our necessity or pleasure are supported by him in the very act of assist-
ing to pleasure us, and when we abuse those creatures against him, which he
supports for our use, how great is his patience to bear with us, that he doth
not annihilate those creatures, or at least embitter their use ! What issue
could reasonably be expected from this consideration, but. Oh wretched man
that I am, to serve myself to God's power, to afi'ront him, and of his long-
suflering to abuse him ! Oh infinite patience, to employ that power to pre-
serve me : that might have been used to punish me ! He is my Creator : I
could not have been without him, and yet I ofiend him. He is my pre-
server, I cannot maintain my being without him, and yet I affront him.
Is this a worthy requital of God ? Deut. xxxii. G, ' Do you thus requite
the Lord?' would be the heart-breaking reflection. How would it give men
a fuller prospect of the depravation of their nature than anything else, that
their corruption should be so deep and strong, that so much patience could
not overcome it ! It would certainly make a man ashamed of his nature as
well as his actions.

(3.) The consideration of his patience would make us resent more the
injuries done by others to God. A patient sufferer, though a deseiwing
sufferer, attracts the pity of men that have a value for any virtue, though
clouded with a heap of vice. How much more should we have a concern
for God, who suffers so many abuses from others, and be grieved that so
admirable a patience should be slighted by men, who live solely by, and
under the daily influence of, it ! The impression of this would make us take
God's part, as it is usual with men to take the part of good dispositions that
lie under oppression.

(4.) It would make us patient under God's hand. His slowness to anger
and his forbearance is visible in the very strokes we feel in this life. We
have no reason to murmur against him who gives us so little cause, and in
the greatest afflictions gives us more occasion of thankfulness than of repin-
ing. Did not slowness to the extremest anger moderate every aftliction, it
had been a scorpion instead of a rod. We have reason to bless him, who
from his long-suffering sends temporal sufferings where eternal are justly
due: Ezra ix. 13, 'Thou hast punished us less than our iniquities do
deserve.' His indulgences towards us have been more than our corrections,
and the length of his patience hath exceeded the sharpness of his rod. Upon
the account of his long-sufi'ering, our mutinies against God have as little to
excuse them as our sins against him have to deserve his forbearance.

The consideration of this would shew us more reason to repine at our own
repiningg, than at any of his smarter dealings; and the consideration of this

540 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

would make us submissive under the judgments we expect. His undeserved
patience hath been more than our merited judgments can possibly be thought
to be. If we fear the removal of the gospel for a season, as we have reason to
do, we should rather bless him that by his waiting patience he hath continued
it so long, than murmur that he threatens to take it away so late. He hath
borne with us many a year since the light of it was rekindled, when our
ancestors had but six years of patience between the rise of Edward the Sixth
and the ascent of Queen Mary to the crown.

2. Exhortation is, to admire and stand astonished at his patience, and
bless him for it. If you should have defiled your neighbour's bed, or sullied
his reputation, or rifled his goods, would he have withheld his vengeance
unless he had been too weak to execute it ? We have done worse to God
than we can do to man, and yet he draws not that sword of wrath out of
the scabbard of his patience to sheathe it in our hearts. It is not so much a
wonder that any judgments are sent, as that there are no more and sharper.
That the world shall be fired at last, is not a thing so strange as that fire
doth not come down every day upon some part of it. Had the disciples,
that saw such excellent patterns of mildness from their Master, and were so
often urged to learn of him that was lowly and meek, the government of the
world, it had been long since turned into ashes, since they were too forward
to desire him to open his magazine of judgments, and kindle a fire to con-
sume a Samaritan village for a slight affront in comparison of what he
received from others, and afterwards from themselves in their forsaking of
him, Luke ix. 52-54. We should admire and praise that here which shall
he praised in heaven. Though patience shall cease as to its exercise after
the consummation of the world, it shall not cease from receiving the acknow-
ledgments of what it did when it traversed the stage of this earth. If the
name of God be glorified and acknowledged in heaven, no question but this
will also ; since long-sitfeririff is one of his divine titles, a letter in his name,
as well as merciful and r/racious, abundant in goodness and truth. And there
is good reason to think that the patience exercised towards some, before
converting grace was ordered to seize upon them, will bear a great part in
the anthems of heaven. The greater his long-sufi'ering hath been to men
that lay covered with their own dung a long time before they were freed by
grace from their filth, the more admiringly and loudly they will cry up his
mercy to them, after they have passed the gulf, and see a deserved hell at a
distance from them, and many in that place of torments, who never had the
tastes of so much forbearance. If mercy will be praised there, that which
began the alphabet of it cannot be forgot. If Paul speak so highly of it in
a damping world, and under the pull-backs of a body of death, as he doth
— 1 Tim. i. 17, 17, 'For this cause I obtained mercy, that Christ might
shew forth all long-suffering. Now, unto the King eternal, immortal, invi-
sible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen,' —
no doubt but he will have a higher note for it when he is surrounded with a
heavenly flame, and freed from all remains of dulness. Shall it be praised
above, and have we no notes for it here below ? Admire Christ too, who
sued out your reprieve upon the account of his merit. As mercy acts not
upon any but in Christ, so neither had patience borne with any but in
Christ. The pronouncing the arrest of judgment, Gen. viii. 21, was when
God smelled a sweet savour from Noah's sacrifice, not from the beasts
offered, but from the antitypical sacrifice represented.

That we may be raised to bless God for it, let us consider,
(1.) The multitude of our provocations. Though some have blacker guilt
than others, and deeper stains, yet let none wipe his mouth, but rather

Nahtjm I. 3.] god's patience. 541

imagine himself to have but little reason to bless it. Are not all our offences
as many as there have been minutes in our lives ? All the moments of our
continuance in the world have been moments of his patience and our ingi'a-
titude. Adam was punished for one sin; Moses excluded Canaan for a
passionate, unbelieving word ; Ananias and Sappbira lost their lives for one
sin against the Holy Ghost. One sin sullied the beauty of the world, defaced
the works of God, had cracked heaven and earth in pieces, had not infinite
satisfaction been proposed to the provoked justice by the Redeemer. And
not one sin committed, but is of the same venomous nature. How many
of those 'contradictions against himself hath he borne with! Had we
been only unprofitable to him, his forbearance of us had been miraculous ;
but how much doth it exceed a miracle, and lift itself above the meanness
of a conjunction with such an epithet, since we have been provoking ! Had
there been no more than our impudent or careless rushings into his presence
in worship ; had they been only sins of omission, and sins of ignorance, it
had been enough to have put a stand to any further operations of this per-
fection towards us. But add to those sins of commission, sins against
knowledge, sins against spiritual motions, sins against repeated resolutions
and pressing admonitions, the neglects of all the opportunities of repent-
ance ; put them all together, and we can as little recount them as the sands
on the sea shore. But what do I only speak of particular men ? View the
whole world, and if our own iniquities render it an amazing patience, what a
mighty supply will be made to it in all the numerous and weighty provoca-
tions under which he hath continued the world for so many revolutions of
years and ages ! Have not all those pressed into his presence with a loud
cry, and demanded a sentence from justice ? Yet hath not the Judge been
overcome by the importunity of our sins. Were the devils punished for
one sin, a proud thought, and that not committed against the blood of
Christ, as we have done numberless times ?* Yet hath not God made us
partakers in their punishment, though we have exceeded them in the quality
of their sin. 0 admirable patience, that would bear with me under so
many, while he would not bear with the sinning angels for one.

2. Consider how mean things we are, who have provoked him. ■V\Tiat is
man but a vile thing, that a God abounding with all riches should take care
of so abject a thing, much more to bear so many affronts from such a drop
of matter, such a nothing creature ! that he that hath anger at his command,
as well as pity, should endure such a detestable, deformed creature by sin
to fly in his face. ' What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? ' Ps. viii.
ii^ljl^, miserable, incurable man, derived from a word that signifies to be
incurably sick. Man is Adam, earth from his earthly original, and Enosh,
incurable from his corruption. Is it not worthy to be admii-ed that a God
of infinite glory should wait upon such Adams, and worms of earth, and be
as it were a servant and attendant to such Enoshes, sickly and peevish
creatures ?

3. Consider who it is that is thus patient. He it is that, with one breath,
could turn heaven and earth, and all the inhabitants of both, into nothing ;
that could by one thunderbolt have razed up the foundations of a cursed
world ; he that wants not instruments without to ruin us, that can arm
our own consciences against us, and can drown us in our own phlegm, and
by taking out one pin from our bodies, cause the whole frame to fall asunder.
Besides, it is a God that, while he suffers the sinner, hates the sin more
than all the holy men upon earth, or angels in heaven, can do, so that his
patience for a minute transcends the patience of all creatures from the crea-

* Pont, part i. 24.

542 charnock's works. [Nahum I. 3.

tion to the dissolution of the world, because it is the patience of a God
infinitely more sensible of the cursed quality of sin, and infinitely more
detesting it.

4. Consider how long he hath forborne his anger. A reprieve for a week
or a month is accounted a great favour in civil states. The civil law enacts that
if the emperor commanded a man to be condemned, the execution was to be
deferred thirty days, because in that time the prince's anger might be
appeased.* But how great a favour is it to be reprieved thirty years for
many off'ences, every one of which deserves death more at the hands of God
than any ofi'ence can at the hands of man ? Paul was, according to the
common account, but about thirty years old at his conversion, and how
much doth he elevate divine long-suffering ? Certainly there are many who
have more reason, as having larger quantities of patience cut out to them,
who have lived to see their own gray hairs in a rebellious posture against
God, before grace brought them to a surrender. We were all condemned
in the womb, our lives were forfeited the first moment of our breath, but
patience hath stopped the arrest ; the merciful creditor deserves to have
acknowledgment from us, who hath laid by his bond for so many years without
putting it in suit against us. Many of your companions in sin have perhaps
been surprised long ago, and haled to an eternal prison, nothing remaining
of them but their dust, and the time is not yet come for your funeral. Let
it be considered that that God, that would not wait upon the fallen angels
one instant after their sin, nor give them a moment's space of repent-
ance, hath prolonged the life of many a sinner in the world to innumerable
moments, to 420,000 f minutes in the space of a year, to 8 J milhon and
400,000 minutes in the space of twenty years. The damned in hell would
think it a great kindness to have but a year's, month's, nay, a day's respite,
as a space to repent in.

5. Consider also how many have been taken away under shorter measures
of patience. Some have been struck into a hell of misery, while thou re-
mainest upon an earth of forbearance. In a plague, the destroying angel
hath hewed down others, and passed by us ; the arrows have flown about our
heads, passed over us, and stuck in the heart of a neighbour. How many rich
men, how many of our friends and familiars, have been seized by death since
the beginning of the year, when they least thought of it, and imagined it far
from them ! Have you not known some of your acquaintance snatched
away in the height of a crime ? Was not the same wrath due to you as well
as to them ? and had it not been as dreadful for you to be so surprised by
him as it was for them ? Why should he take a less sturdy sinner out of
thy company, and let thee remain still upon the earth ? If God had dealt
so with you, how had you been cut oil', not only from the enjoyment of this
life but the hopes of a better ? And if God hath made such a providence
beneficial for reclaiming you, how much reason have you to acknowledge
him ? He that hath had least patience hath cause to admire, but those that
have more ought to exceed others in blessing him for it. If God had put
an end to your natural life before you had made provision for eternal, how
deplorable would your condition have been ?

Consider also, whoever have been sinners formerly of a deeper note,
might not God have struck a man in the embraces of his harlots, and choked
him in the moment of his excessive and intemperate healths, or on the sudden
have spurted fire and brimstone into a blasphemer's mouth ? What if God
had snatched you away when you had been sleeping in some great iniquity,
or sent you, while burning in lust, to the fire it merited ? Might he not have
* Cod. lib. ix. Titul. xlvii. 6, 20. t 525,600.— Ed. i 10.— Ed.

Nahum I. 3.] god's patience. 543

cracked the string that linked your souls to your bodies in the last sickness
you had ? And what then had become of you, what could have been expected
to succeed your impenitent state in this world, but bowlings in another ?
But he reprieved you upon your petitions, or the sohcitations of your friends,
and have you not broke your word with him ? Have your hearts been sted-
fast, hath he not yet waited, expecting when you would put your vows and resolu-
tions into execution ? What need had he to cry out to any so loud and so
long, 0 you fools, ' how long will you love foolishness,' Prov. i. 22, when he
might have ceased his crying to you, and have by your death prevented your
many neglects of him ? Did he do all this, that any of us might add new
sins to our old, or rather that we should bless him for his forbearance, comply
with the end of it, in reforming our lives and having recourse to his mercy.

3. Exhortation. Therefore presume not upon his patience. The exercise
of it is not eternal ; you are at present under his patience, yet while you are
unconverted you are also under his anger : Ps. vii. 11, ' God is angry with
the wicked every day.' You know not how soon his anger may turn his
patience aside, and step before it. It may be his sword is drawn out of bis
scabbard, his arrows may be settled in his bow, and perhaps there is but a
little time before you may feel the edge of the one or the point of the other,
and then there will be no more time for patience in God to us, or petition
from us to him. If we repent here, he will pardon us. If we defer repent-
ance, and die without it, he will have no longer mercy to pardon, nor patience
to bear.

"WTiat is there in our power but the present ? The future time we cannot
command, the past time we cannot recall ; squander not, then, the present
away. The time will come when ' time shall be no more,' and then long-
suffering shall be no more. Will you neglect the time wherein patience acts,
and vainly hope for a time beyond the resolves of patience ? Will you spend
that in vain which goodness hath allotted you for other purposes ? What
an estimate will you make of a little forbearance to respite death, when you
are gasping under the stroke of its arrows ! How much would you value
some few days of those many years you now trifle away ! Can any think
God will be always at an expense with them in vain ; that he will have such
riches trampled under their feet, and so many editions of his patience be
made waste paper ? Do you know how few sands are yet to run in your
glass ? Are you sure that he that waits to-day will wait as well to-morrow ?
How can you tell but that God, that is slow to anger to-day, may be swift
to it the next ? Jerusalem had but a day of peace, and the most careless
sinner hath no more. When their day was done, they were destroyed by
famine, pestilence, or sword, or led into a doleful captivity. Did God make
cur Hves so uncertain, and the duration of his forbearance unknown to us,
that we should live in a lazy neglect of his glory and our own happiness ?
If you should have more patience in regard of 3-our lives, do you know
whether ycu shall have the effectual offers of grace ? As j'our lives depend
upon his will, so your conversion depends solely upon his grace. There
have been many examples of those miserable wretches that have been left
to a reprobate sense, after they have a long time abused divine forbearance.
Though he waits, yet he binds up sin : Hosea xiii. 12, ' The sin of Ephraim
is bound up,' as bonds arc bound up by a creditor till a fit opportunity.
When God comes to put the bond in suit, it will be too late to wish for that
patience we have so scornfully despised. Consider, therefore, the end of
patience. The patience of God, considered in itself, without that which it
tends to, affords very little comfort ; it is but a step to pardoning mercy,
and it may be without it, and often is. Many have been reprieved that

544 cHA.RNocii's WORKS. [Nahum I. 3.

were never forgiven. Hell is full of those that had patience as well as we,
but not one that accepted pardoning grace went within the gates of it.
Patience leaves men when their sins have ripened them for hell, but pardon-
ing grace never leaves men till it hath conducted them to heaven. His
patience speaks him placable, but doth not assure us that he is actually
appeased. Men may hope that long-sutfering tends to a pardon, but cannot
be assured of a pardon but by something else above mere long-suffering.
Rest not, then, upon bare patience, but consider the end of it ; it is not that
any should sin more freely, but repent more meltingly ; it is not to spirit
rebellion, but give a merciful stop to it. Why should any be soambitious
of their ruin as to constrain God to ruin them against the inclinations of
his sweet disposition?

4. The fourth exhortation is. Let us imitate God's patience in our own to
others. He is unlike God, that is hurried with an unruly imj:ietiis to punish
others for wronging him. The consideration of divine patience should make
us square ourselves according to that pattern. God hath exercised a long-
suffering from the fall of Adam to this minute on innumerable subjects, and
shall we be transported with desire of revenge upon a single injury ? If
God were not slow to wrath, a sinful world had been long ago torn up from
the foundation. And if revenge should be exercised by all men against their
enemies, what man should have been alive, since there is not a man without
an enemy ? If every man were like Saul, breathing out threatenings, the
world would not only be an Aceldama, but a desert. How distant are they
from the nature of God, who are in a flame upon every slight provocation,
from a sense of some feeble and imaginary honour, that must bloody their
sword for a trifle, and write their revenge in wounds and death. When God
hath his glory every day bespattered, yet he keeps his sword in his sheath.
What a woe would it be to the world, if he drew it upon every afi'ront !
This is to be like brutes, dogs or tigers, that snarl, bite, and devour upon
every slight occasion ; but to be patient, is to be divine, and to shew our-
selves acquainted with the disposition of God. ' Be you therefore perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect,' Mat. v. 48, i. e. be you perfect and good ;
for he had been exhorting them to bless them that cursed them, and to do
good to them that hated them ; and that from the example God had set them,
in causing his sun to rise upon the evil as well as the good. Be you there-
fore perfect. To conclude ; as patience is God's perfection, so it is the
accomplishment of the soul. And as his slowness to anger argues the great-
ness of his power over himself, so an unwillingness to revenge is a sign of a
power over ourselves, which is more noble than to be a monarch over others.

END OF VOL. 11,